". . . nor did Pnin, as a teacher, ever presume to approach the loft halls of modern scientific linguistics, that ascetic fraternity of phonemes, that temple wherein young people are taught not the language itself, but the method of teaching others to teach that method; which method, like a waterfall splashing from rock to rock, ceases to be a medium of rational navigation but perhaps in some fabulous future may become instrumental in evolving esoteric dialects—Basic Basque and so forth—spoken only by certain elaborate machines." (10)

"Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping its tracks a few feet above the cowering villages not only unnaturally but unethically." (25-26)

"Marriage hardly changed their manner of life except that she moved into Pnin's dingy apartment. He went on with...