“I never go into the country for a change of air and a holiday. I always go instead into the eighteenth century.”

“I was going to change my clothes, but I changed my mind instead.”

“The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.”

“Nabokov changed my life," Max said. "I was going to be a writer, and then I read Lolita and I decided to go to law school instead. It looked easier.”

“Lying on the floor, with the carved panels of the ceiling flickering dimly above, I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eigh­teenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men. ”

“I want to go out into the country, I want to thread the pale Spring air, and hear the lambs cry. I want to brush my face against the grass, and wade in a wave of bluebells.”