Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain — the brain, that stomach… - Vladimir Nabokov

As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.

The Girl Scout’s motto is also mine. I fill my life with worthwhile deeds such as — well, never mind what. My duty is — to be useful. I am a friend to male animals. I am cheerful. I am thrifty and I am absolutely filthy in thought, word, and deed.