Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth. - Vladimir Nabokov

"Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely."

"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."

"To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute."

"I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else."

"The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book."