Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler’s helmet. Stay inside or you perish.
Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.
Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?
Burn pedants in pale fire. Accept no fashions. Be your own fashion. Do not rely on earlier triumphs. Be new at each appearance.
Age indomitably, in the European manner. Do not finish your labours young. Be a planet, not a meteor. Honor the working day. Sit at your desk.
Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
I don’t want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me.
It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.
Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity.
My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
A major writer combines these three – storyteller, teacher, enchanter – but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.
Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.
I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio program, changes in out look and so forth.
Dostoevky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire.
Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.
Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It’s like passing around samples of sputum.
All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.
I think it is all a matter of love...
Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest ‘warmth’ which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be.