The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
It was high time I destroyed him, but he must understand why he was being destroyed.
Humbert the Terrible deliberated with Humbert the Small whether Humbert Humbert should kill her or her lover, or both, or neither.
He excused himself saying he felt out of sorts, and continued to clean the bowl of his pipe as fiercely as if it were my heart he was hollowing out.
Freedom for the moment is everything.
Well, you haven’t kissed me yet, have you.
The evening is the time to praise the day.
You who conceal your strongest feelings must think me a shameless little idiot for throwing open my poor bruised heart like this.
Say, wouldn’t Mother be absolutely mad if she found out we were lovers.
Here, I’ll tell you – with my love I could have filled ten centuries of fire, songs, and valour – ten whole centuries, enormous and winged, – full of knights riding up blazing hills – and legends about giants – and fierce Troys – and orange sails – and pirates – and poets.
I said nothing. I pushed her softness back into the room and went in after her. I ripped her shirt off. I unzipped the rest of her, I tore off her sandals. Wildly, I pursued the shadow of her infidelity; but the scent I traveled upon was so slight as to be practically undistinguishable from a madman’s fancy.
I think there must exist a special subversive group of pseudo-cupids – plump hairless little devils whom Satan commissions to make disgusting mischief in sacrosanct places.
We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing... I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable.
I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelops us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a spacetraveller’s helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.
This then is my story.
It had glistening eyes like sad black olives.
Had I come before myself, I would have given Humbert at least thirty-five years for rape, and dismissed the rest of the charges. But even so, Dolly Schiller will probably survive me by many years. The following decision I make with all the legal impact and support of a signed testament: I wish this memoir to be published only when Lolita is no longer alive.
Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.
Uncle Dan was feeding.
What I am thinking of is the man of imagination and science, whose courage is infinite because his curiosity surpasses his courage. Nothing will keep him back.
For I do not exist: there exist but thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases.