Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

Is it Fate scheming?

Poets never kill.

I had actually seen the agent of fate.

Ah, gentle drivers gliding through summer’s black nights, what frolics, what twists of lust, you might see from your impeccable highways if Kumfy Kabins were suddenly drained of their pigments and became as transparent as boxes of glass!

try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity;

A combination of naïveté and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of blue sulks and rosy mirth, Lolita,

Welcome, fellow, to this bordello.

I had always thought that type of haddocky spinster with the obscene mind was the result of considerable literary inbreeding in modern fiction;

Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?

We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.

Makes me think of "Two Talented Bastids" by Stephen King. People aren't supposed to change so dramatically.

this world was just one gag after another,

The moral sense in mortals is the duty We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty.

You can't just take something because it's pretty.

am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art.