Being Lolita Quotes

“I wonder about things like fate, how sometimes things are just chosen for you, how women are chosen to endure suffering.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“that in order to be attractive, irresistible, to be worthy of notice, was to be both beautiful and in open need, to be damaged. The perfect artistry of pretty and pain. Nabokov wrote that beauty plus pity is the closest we can get to art. I needed the teacher’s gaze to feel beautiful.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“Yes, "Lolita" is beautiful. But yes, it's also terrible. We can hold both in our hands.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“And if Lolita could make another choice, a choice to leave, so could I. I was ready to choose something else.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“I loved the patterns of the words, all the myths and images of antiquity, how signs from goddesses could be scattered in everyday life. If you just paid enough attention, the answers would appear in the stars, would fall from the sky into your hands. I longed for that illumination. I longed for a lot of things as a teen girl.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“That moment in my body when the teacher put his hand on my knee to comfort me was the understanding of all of that--that in order to be attractive, irresistible, to be worthy of notice, was to be both beautiful and in open need, to be damaged.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“Her archetype captures innocence in a woman, a girl trapped in between child and adult....I was in that ephemeral in-between, that space and moment of wanting both and not knowing when to let go of either. Can't I have it all?”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“The thing about princesses is that they’re not usually very active in their own lives. Things happen to a princess, and all she has to do is say yes. Sometimes she doesn’t even have to speak, her prince will just appear, ready for action. He knows what she needs, maybe even more than she does.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“He leaned down to my foot next to him and put his lips on my pink, swollen ankle. I felt his breath on my skin.
And it was like every locked in the halls of my high school swung open at once, metal kissing cinder-block walls. It felt just like that.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“I boasted. Exaggerated. I let my words balloon on the page because I wanted so badly to be seen as a woman, as someone worthy of attraction.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“At what point does a girl turn into prey?”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“I wonder about things like fate, how sometimes things are just chosen for you, how some women are chosen to endure suffering.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“I can see that now, my girl-self refracted through time and distance, through space.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“This is not to disavow the agency, maturity, or intelligence of my students. Even the youngest ones, at eighteen, are (mostly) legal adults. Practically grown-ups. Some truly are, already, grown-ups. But still. They're also teenagers.
Most have never lived alone, and still don't, living in dorms with roommates. Many have never paid rent, cooked a meal for themselves. They have not legally bought alcohol. Many do not have credit cards. They have never had a full-time job and bills. Now, at thirty-six, I feel like they are children.
When I talk to the ones who stand out the most-the girls who are sad and talented and looking for help without ever actually saying that—I realize: when I blossomed under the attention and care of my teacher, I was asking for the support I desperately needed. I wasn't asking to be fucked.
After I had been teaching for a few semesters, I reread my high school journals. I had already begun writing about what had happened to me in classrooms in high school, hotel rooms after that. I had already begun to try to capture it on the page.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“It seems as if no matter how active or passive a girl is, she is still doomed.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“There is a long history of loneliness in literature. Of loneliness as a prerequisite to love. Almost like you can’t really love someone unless you’ve been alone and loveless for a long time. At least, if you’re a woman. Almost as if this protracted alone time is a purification, prepares a girl to be worthy of a man’s love.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“Hay una larga historia de soledad en la literatura. De la soledad como requisito previo para amar. Casi como si realmente no pudieras amar a alguien a menos que hayas estado solo y sin amor durante mucho tiempo. Al menos, si eres mujer. Casi como si este prolongado tiempo a solas fuera una purificación, prepara a una chica para ser digna del amor de un hombre. Piense en los mitos griegos, la Odisea : Calypso bailando hechicería sola en su isla, Penélope esperando veinte años a que regrese su marido errante.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“Nabokov dijo que todas las buenas historias son cuentos de hadas. A los diecisiete, estaba preparada para ser la princesa de
alguien.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita