I discovered in nature the non utilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.
We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.
You are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought...
A moment later I heard my sweetheart running up the stairs. My heart expanded with such force that it almost blotted me out. I hitched up the pants of my pajamas, flung the door open: and simultaneously Lolita arrived, in her Sunday frock, stamping, panting, and the she was in my arms, her innocent mouth melting under the ferocious pressure of dark male jaws, my palpitating darling!
On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel in my bones that there is a chance yet of my not being excluded from Heaven, and that salvation may be granted to me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart.
Good by-aye!” she chanted, my American sweet immortal dead love; for she is dead and immortal if you are reading this.
The mind writes with a pen, the heart, with a pencil.
A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading.
A poet’s purified truth can cause no pain, no offense. True art is above false honor.
His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely loss.
He stood up and took off the dressing gown, the skullcap, the slippers. He took off the linen trousers and shirt. He took off his head like a toupee, took off his collarbones like shoulder straps, took off his rib cage like a hauberk. He took off his hips and his legs, he took off his arms like gauntlets and threw them in a corner. What was left of him gradually dissolved, hardly coloring the air.
The lovely thing about humanity is that at times one may be unaware of doing right, but one is always aware of doing wrong.
Without you I wouldn’t have moved this way, to speak the language of flowers.
I broke her spell by incarnating her in another.
Nothing on earth really matters, there is nothing to fear, and death is but a question of style, a mere literary device, a musical resolution.
I love you, I’m waiting for you unbearably.
One mercifully hopes there are water nymphs in the Styx.
If his Russian was music, his English was murder.
I was always lonely and I am lonely still.
Sometimes, though, angels smoke-in their sleeves. But when the archangel goes by, they throw their cigarettes away: This is what falling stars are.