Lolita Quotes

“[...] her autobiography was as devoid of interests as her autopsy would have been. I never saw a healthier woman than she, despite thinning diets.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski, some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked:
'You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own'; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate — dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions; for I often noticed that living as we did, she and I, in a world of total evil, we would become strangely embarrassed whenever I tried to discuss something she and an older friend, she and a parent, she and a real healthy sweetheart, I and Annabel, Lolita and a sublime, purified, analyzed, deified Harold Haze, might have discussed — and abstract idea, a painting, stippled Hopkins or shorn Baudelaire, God or Shakespeare, anything of a genuine kind. Good will! She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I, using for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own last teeth on edge, provoked my audience to such outburst of rudeness as made any further conversation impossible, oh my poor, bruised child.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“She wore poetry.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“What mad hope or hate makes the young beast’s flanks pulsate, what black stars pierce the heart of the tamer!”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Somewhere beyond Bill’s shack an afterwork radio had begun singing of folly and fate, and there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, there she was (my Lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D. — and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“La mujer barbuda nos lee las manos y predice lo que seremos, aunque no adivina lo que somos.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“It struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate—dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions; for I often noticed that living as we did, she and I, in a world of total evil, we would become strangely embarrassed whenever I tried to discuss something she and an older friend, she and a parent, she and a real healthy sweetheart, I and Annabel, Lolita and a sublime, purified, analyzed, deified Harold Haze, might have discussed—an abstract idea, a painting, stippled Hopkins or shorn Baudelaire, God or Shakespeare, anything of a genuine kind. Good will! She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I, using for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own last teeth on edge, provoked my audience to such outbursts of rudeness as made any further conversation impossible, oh my poor bruised child.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Her smile was but a quizzical jerk of one eyebrow; and uncoiling herself from the sofa as she talked, she kept making spasmodic dashes at three ashtrays and the near fender (where lay the brown core of an apple); whereupon she would sink back again, one leg folded under her. She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul; women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heart to the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but very particular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunny cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily distinguished.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“While my body knew what it craved for, my mind rejected my body's every plea. One moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic. Taboos strangulated me.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“She showed a fierce insatiable curiosity
for my past. She desired me to resuscitate all my loves so that she might make me insult them, and trample upon them, and revoke them apostately and totally, thus destroying my past.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Gyvenime, lekiančiame visu greičiu, su trenksmu atsivėrė šoninės durelės, pro kurias įsiveržė juodos amžinybės raudojimas, vėjo gūsių kauksmu nustelbęs vienišos žūties riksmą.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“I felt instinctively that toilets- as also telephones- happened to be for reasons unfathomable, the points where my destiny was liable to catch”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Moth holes had appeared in the plush of matrimonial comfort.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“my knees were reflections of knees in rippling water”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Lo espiritual y lo físico se habían fundido en nosotros con perfección tal que no puede sino resultar incomprensible para los jovenzuelos materialistas, rudos y de mentes uniformes, típicos de nuestro tiempo.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Tenho observado, com frequência, que somos inclinados a atribuir aos nossos amigos essa estabilidade de tipo que as personagens literárias adquirem na mente do leitor. (...) Qualquer que seja a evolução por que passe esta ou aquela personagem popular entre as capas do livro, seu destino se acha fixado em nossa mente e, do mesmo modo, esperamos que nossos amigos sigam este ou aquele modelo lógico e convencional que lhes fixamos. Assim, X jamais comporá a música imortal que entraria em choque com as sinfonias de segunda classe a que nos habituou. Y jamais se suicidará. Em circunstância alguma Z poderia jamais trair-nos. Temos tudo arranjado em nossa mente, e quanto menos vemos uma determinada pessoa tanto mais satisfatório nos é verificar quão obediente ela se ajusta à ideia que dela fazemos, toda vez que ouvimos falar dela. Qualquer modificação nos destinos que decretamos nos chocaria, não só como coisa anômala, mas contrária à ética. Preferíamos não saber que o nosso vizinho, o vendedor aposentado de "cachorro-quente", acabou por tornar-se autor do maior livro de poesia jamais produzido em sua época.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“[It] may well be that the very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“But reality soon asserted itself.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“On all those random occasions, I seemed to myself as implausible a father as she seemed to be a daughter.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“A couple of years before, under the guidance of an intelligent French-speaking confessor, to whom, in a moment of metaphysical curiosity, I had turned over a Protestant's drab atheism for an old-fashioned popish cure, I had hoped to deduce from my sense of sin the existence of a Supreme Being.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“To myself I whispered that I still had my gun, and was still a free man -- free to trace the fugitive, free to destroy my brother.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“There was an ecstasy, a madness about her frolics that was too much of a glad thing.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“I should have known (by the signs made to me by something in Lolita -- the real child Lolita or some haggard angel behind her back) that nothing but pain and horror would result form the expected rapture. Oh, winged gentleman of the jury!”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“On złamał mi serce. A Ty mi złamałeś tylko życie.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Je suis saine de corps, et absolument obscène dans mes pensées, ma parole, mes actes.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“...the book like a sleigh left my lap...”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Thưa quí bà quí ông trong đoàn bồi thẩm, những tội phạm tình dục, thèm khát quan hệ thể xác với một bé gái theo cách nào đó, rạo rực đến độ sướng rên lên, nhưng không nhất thiết là giao hợp, đa phần là những kẻ vô tích sự, bất tức, thụ động, rụt rè, những kẻ cha căng chú kiết chì cầu xin cộng đồng cho họ được phép theo đuổi cách hành xử gọi là dị thường nhưng hầu như vô hại của họ, được phép kín đáo duy trì tí chút hành vi tình dục trái thói, vừa nóng bỏng vừa ướt át của họ, mà không bị cảnh sát và xã hội trấn áp. Chúng tôi không phải là những tên quỷ dâm dục! Chúng tôi không hiếp đám như đám binh sĩ hảo hớn. Chúng tôi là những người ngoài hoa phong nhã bất hạnh, hiều hòa với đôi mắt cho tiu nghỉu, đã hội nhập đủ mức với cộng đồng để biết kiềm chế xung động của mình trước mặt những người lớn tuổi, những sẵn sàng đổi nhiều, nhiều năm sống lấy một cơ hội chung đụng với một tiểu nữ thần. Xin nhất mjanh rằng chúng tôi tuyệt đối không pahr là những kẻ giết người. Thi sĩ không giết người bao giờ. Ôi, Charlotte tội nghiệp của tôi, đừng có căm ghét tôi, từ bầu trời vĩnh cửu của mình, giữa một thuật giả kim vĩnh cửu của nhựa đường và cao su và kim loại và đá - nhưng đội ơn Chúa, không có nước, không có nước!”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Ngày nay, anh phải là một nhà khoa học nếu muốn giết người.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita