He groped for his loafers and walked aimlessly for some time among the trees of the coppice where thrushes were singing so richly, with such sonorous… - Vladimir Nabokov

Great novels are above all great fairy tales . . . literature does not tell the truth but makes it up.

There was a sudden sunburst in my head. And then black night. That blackness was sublime. I felt distributed through space and time: One foot upon a mountaintop, one hand 150 Under the pebbles of a panting strand, One ear in Italy, one eye in Spain, In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain. There were dull throbs in my Triassic; green Optical spots in Upper Pleistocene, An icy shiver down my Age of Stone, And all tomorrows in my funnybone.

He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.