One can have the impression that life in London is pretty pleasant. But all is rotten inside.

One of Nabokov's most striking peculiarities was his near-pathological good cheer — he himself found it "indecent."

You're not in the flicks now, you know. People who go to the Opera, they don't go to the toilet, not even at home. And if I stood up in this gear I'd bring the house down anyway.

Even the microbes, the spores of the middle air, are finding all this a little hard on their nerves.

The room—Gwyn's study, his library, his lab—was very bad.

I recorded all I saw, felt, thought. I had myself a time.

When I arrived in Brighton I was in love – first love. It came, then stayed, then went; having filled me, it then emptied me.

The writer's life divides into three segments: there's writing, there's that thing called living, and also there's reading.

To say this of human beings is to say both the best and the worst. They can get used to anything.

I must accept that I'm not an alcoholic. If I were, I'd have one of those cool alcoholic constitutions.

Richard was sitting at his desk. His life was desks. Life had changed. But life was still desks.

The streets are full of movement but hardly anybody goes where they go through thought or choice, free of money motive. Only people with money do that.

Keith did what he usually did when he wanted to get to know a member of the opposite sex. He followed her home.

Selina was asleep, contentedly so, uncunning, unperplexed.

"Have you any thoughts," the interviewer was saying, "on turning forty?"

She really might do all those things if she's fucked up too, like me. (I'd do them, to anyone.)

Words are your fuel.

Getting old is the subtraction of your powers.

Take life off the stands. It's too fucking difficult and we aren't any good at it.

What makes you a writer? You develop an extra sense that partly excludes you from experience.