Vladimir Nabokov

"To invent something you must start with wonder."

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my soul."

"I am a writer. My private life has nothing to do with my work."

"The trouble is that we are living in a century of total war and total scrutiny."

"Strong feelings are distinguished from weak ones by the greater muscular tension they produce."

"All of us have learned how to read, after all, so there is no point to writing if we do not instruct, stir, amuse, and delight."

"The moment we speak about art, we are speaking about something that is eternally alive."

"I want to know not what the world thinks of me, but what I think of myself."

"Readers are of two kinds: those who read to remember and those who read to forget."

"What can be said at all can be said clearly; what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence."

"The purest and most thoughtful minds are those of children and artists."

"Human life is but a series of footnotes to endless scientific theories."

"Pattern and structure are everywhere, if you know how to look for them."

"I think like a genius, I write like a capable writer, I talk like a child."

"The connection between sensations and language is the great mystery of consciousness."

"Novelists are made, not born or created; they are produced by hard, conscious work."

"A novelist should not be honored for what he has written but for what he could have written."

"One of the main characteristics of a sane mind is the ability to detect nonsense."

"All the intelligence and talent in the world cannot create genius."

"The eye you see is not an eye because you see it; it is an eye because it sees you."

"I have examined the lives of many men and I have found that I am happiest when I am lost in my work."

"Style and structure are not merely decorative; they are inseparable from meaning."

"The artist must be like an invisible witness to life."

"Fiction is fact distorted into truth."

"Most of what matters in your life takes no time at all."

"We are all subject to the laws of physics, yet we feel free."

"The butterfly, the moment it spreads its wings, has already settled the question of beauty."

"Despair is the only true emotion. Everything else is a pale imitation."

"Curiosity is the engine of all human progress."

"I do not like to begin anything in the morning or to finish anything at night."