Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"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. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds... but thank God it was not that echo alone that I worshipped. What I used to pamper among the tangled vines of my heart, mon grand pch radieux, had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish vice, all that I cancelled and cursed. You may jeer at me, and threaten to clear the court, but until I am gagged and halfthrottled, I will shout my poor truth. I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine; Changeons de vie, ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque, part o nous ne serons jamais spars; Ohio? The wilds of Massachusetts? No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torneven then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita."
39 Quotes
"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. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds... but thank God it was not that echo alone that I worshipped. What I used to pamper among the tangled vines of my heart, mon grand pch radieux, had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish vice, all that I cancelled and cursed. You may jeer at me, and threaten to clear the court, but until I am gagged and halfthrottled, I will shout my poor truth. I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine; Changeons de vie, ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque, part o nous ne serons jamais spars; Ohio? The wilds of Massachusetts? No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torneven then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita."
"وتطلعتُ إليها مراراً، وأدركتُ بوضوحٍ لا يقلّ عن يقيني بالموت، أنني أحببتها أكثر من كل ما رأيتُ أو تخيلتُ على وجه الأرض، أو تمنيتُ في أي مكان آخر. لم تكن سوى نفحة بنفسجية خافتة، وصدى أوراق ذابلة لتلك الحورية التي كنتُ ألقي بنفسي عليها بصرخاتٍ في غابر الأيام؛ صدىً على شفير وادٍ قرمزيّ، مع غابة بعيدة تحت سماء بيضاء، وأوراق سمراء تسدّ مجرى الجدول، وصرصور أخير في الأعشاب الهشة... لكن حمداً لله، لم يكن ذلك الصدى وحده ما عبدتُه. فما كنتُ أُدلّله بين كروم قلبي المتشابكة، خطيئتي العظمى المتوهجة، قد تقلّص إلى جوهره: رذيلة عقيمة وأنانيّة، كل ما ألغيتُه ولعنتُه. قد تسخرون مني، وتهددون بإخلاء القاعة، لكن حتى أُكمّم وأُخنق نصف خنق، سأصرخ بحقيقتي البائسة. أُصرّ على أن يعلم العالم كم أحببتُ لوليتاي، هذه لوليتا، الشاحبة الملوثة، والحامل بطفل رجل آخر، لكنها لا تزال رمادية العينين، لا تزال رموشها حالكة، لا تزال كستنائية ولوزية، لا تزال كارمنسيتا، لا تزال ملكي؛ لنغير حياتنا يا كارمن، لنذهب ونعيش في مكان ما حيث لن نفترق أبداً؛ أوهايو؟ براري ماساتشوستس؟ لا يهم، حتى لو بهتت عيناها لتصبحا كعيون سمكة قصيرة النظر، وتورمت حلمتاها وتشققت، وتلوثت وتمزقت تلك المنطقة المخملية الفاتنة—حتى حينها سأجنّ رقةً لمجرد رؤية وجهك الشاحب العزيز، ولمجرد سماع صوتك الشاب الأجش، يا لوليتاي."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"Since I sometimes won the race between my fancy and nature’s reality, the deception was bearable. Unbearable pain began when chance entered the fray and deprived me of the smile meant for me."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"If I broke her heart, her image of me would break too"
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"I was a daisy fresh girl and look what you've done to me."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio program, changes in out look and so forth."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"The days of my youth, as I look back on them; seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation can."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee:“Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic tonight.”It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability - a most singular case, I presume - of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"I would fight of course. Oh, I would fight. Better destroy everything than surrender her."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"You must be careful. There are things that should never be given up. You must persevere."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"I notice I may have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"They are beautiful, heart-rendingly beautiful, those wilds, with a quality of wide-eyed, unsung, innocent surrender that my lacquered, toy-bright Swiss villages and exhaustively lauded Alps no longer possess. Innumerable lovers have clipped and kissed on the trim turf of old-world mountainsides, on the innerspring moss, by a handy, hygienic rill, on rustic benches under the initialed oaks, and in so many cabanes in so so many beech forests. But in the Wilds of America the open-air lover will not find it easy to indulge in the most ancient of all crimes and pastimes. Poisonous plants burn his sweetheart's buttocks, nameless insects sting his; sharp items of the forest floor prick his knees, insects hers; and all around there abides a sustained rustle of potential snakes--que dis-je,of semi-extinct dragons!--while the crablike seeds of ferocious flowers cling, in a hideous green crust, to gartered black sock and sloppy white sock alike."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"Running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight"
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"And I thought to myself how those fast little articles forget everything, everything, while we, old lovers, treasure every inch of their nymphancy"
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"The moral sense in mortals is the duty We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"One last word,' I said in my horrible careful English, 'are you quite, quite sure that—well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow, but—well—some day, any day, you will not come to live with me? I will create a brand new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope''No,' she said smiling, 'no.''It would have made all the difference,' said Humbert Humbert. Then I pulled out my automatic-I mean, this is the kind of fool thing a reader might suppose I did. It never even occurred to me to do it."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
"Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses."
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
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