Lolita Quotes
"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style."
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied."
"I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person."
"The softness and fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain."
"As a case history, 'Lolita' will become, no doubt, a classic in psychiatric circles."
"I have no intention to glorify 'H.H.' No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject."
"I am like one of those inflated pale spiders you see in old gardens."
"My heart seemed everywhere at once. Never in my life... never."
"The wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac—these are not only vivid characters in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils."
"Let me state with a sob that today my L. was sun-bathing on the so-called 'piazza,' but her mother and some other woman were around all the time."
"I long for some terrific disaster. Earthquake. Spectacular explosion. Her mother is messily but instantly and permanently eliminated, along with everybody else for miles around."
"I am leaving tonight. This is all yours. Only you’ll never, never see that miserable brat again."
"Never in my life had I confessed so much or received so many confessions."
"I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna of my darling, and a groveling something still persisted in my attitude toward her."
"I knew the sun shone because my ignition key was reflected in the windshield."
"The sun was still a blinding red when he was put to bed in Dolly’s room by his two friends, gentle John and dewy-eyed Jean."
"She was not quite knowing if I was serious, or how to keep up the conversation, stood for several slow pages peering at the window pane rather than through it."
"The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled, and the bars, and the barmen, were presently taken over by her."
"We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen."
"I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron."
"She was thinner and taller, and for a second it seemed to me her face was less pretty than the mental imprint I had cherished for more than a month."
"In the gay town of Lepingville, I bought her four books of comics, a box of candy, a box of sanitary pads, two cokes, a manicure set, a travel clock with a luminous dial, a ring with a real topaz, a tennis racket, roller skates with white high shoes, field glasses, a portable radio set, chewing gum, a transparent raincoat, sunglasses, some more garments."
"I had thought that months, perhaps years, would elapse before I dared to reveal myself to Dolores Haze; but by six she was wide awake, and by six fifteen we were technically lovers."
"Restraint and reverence were still my motto—even if that 'purity' (incidentally, thoroughly debunked by modern science) had been slightly damaged through some juvenile erotic experience, no doubt homosexual, at that accursed camp of hers."
"The clatter of the elevator’s gate—some twenty yards northeast of my head but as clearly perceived as if it were inside my left temple—alternated with the banging and booming of the machine’s various evolutions and lasted well beyond midnight."
"I am trying to describe these things not to relive them in my present boundless misery, but to sort out the portion of hell and the portion of heaven in that strange, awful, maddening world—nymphet love."
"All I would do—all I would dare do—would amount to such a trifle..."
"In my strange predicament, I feigned supreme stupidity and had her have her way—at least while I could still bear it."
"But really these are irrelevant matters; I am not concerned with so-called 'sex' at all."
"I am nature’s faithful hound. Why then this horror that I cannot shake off? Did I deprive her of her flower?"
"You are a blind girl. Palpate the face of: a Greek youth, Cyrano, Santa Claus, a baby, a laughing faun, a sleeping stranger, your father."
"I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with."
"A big W made of white stones on a steep talus in the far vista of a cross street seemed the very initial of woe."
"We must remember that a pistol is the Freudian symbol of the Ur-father’s central forelimb."
"I saw Lolita’s eyes, and they seemed to be more calculating than frightened."
"I remember evolving even an explanation of the 'Birdsley' telephone call."
"Jos Lizzarrabengoa, as you remember, planned to take his Carmen to the Etats Unis."
"A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely."
"The moral sense in mortals is the duty we have to pay on mortal sense of beauty."
"Life is very short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces."
"I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else."
"I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita."
"No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear,' never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry."
"I am infinitely obliged to him and the great Institution he represented."
"Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical."
"I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair."
"I admit that a man of my power of imagination cannot plead personal ignorance of universal emotions."
"On some of the graves there were pale, transparent little national flags slumped in the windless air under the evergreens."
"Before the great bloodshed, I was entitled to a little relief, to a cathartic spasm of mental regurgitation."
"All at once I noticed that from the lawn I had mown a golden-skinned, brown-haired nymphet of nine or ten, in white shorts, was looking at me with wild fascination in her large blue-black eyes."
"I was on the point of identifying myself when, with a pang of dream-embarrassment, I became aware of my mud-caked dungarees, my filthy and torn sweater, my bristly chin, my bum’s bloodshot eyes."
"What a steep little street. What a profound avenue."
"The whole arrangement was a masterpiece of comfort, and my canines were in perfect health."
"A white-smocked, gray-haired man, with a crew cut and the big flat cheeks of a politician."
"Capacity: eight cartridges. Full Blued. Aching to be discharged."
"As the music paused for a moment, there was a sudden noise on the stairs."
"Reader! What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that."
"It has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies."
"Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book."