Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.
His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.
Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
Measure me while I live – after it will be too late.
My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.
Why do those people guess so much and shave so little, and are so disdainful of hearing aids?
I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll, because he was the first Humbert Humbert.
Don’t cry, I’m sorry to have deceived you so much, but that’s how life is.
I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don’t seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
It’s a pity one can’t imagine what one can’t compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.
While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life’s full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness – that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidts the night of non-being.
I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.
Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.
No difference exists between American and European manners. A proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.