v > v's Quotes

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. 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. Look at this tangle of thorns.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Be true to your Dick.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Everything you can imagine is real.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
― Thomas Merton , No Man Is an Island

“I am a human being, not a human doing.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That's one of my favorite things to say. So what.”
― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

“Art is what you can get away with.”
― Andy Warhol

“As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.”
― Andy Warhol

“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.”
― Andy Warhol

“No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful.”
― They Might Be Giants

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.”
― T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral