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Lolita

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze

(12 total)

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Banned Books

“There was the day, during our first trip— our first circle of paradise — when in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving, the fact that I was to her not a boy friend, not a glamour man, not a pal, not even a person at all, but just two eyes an…”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Humbert Humbert As Object

“My heart was like snow.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Favorite Similes/Metaphors

“I recall when after having had my fill of her after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred — I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my…”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: But Then Gomorrah Calls, Lust, Addiction

“Lolita 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…”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Solipsism, Selfish Love

“I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Past, Haunted Memory

“By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Excitement

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: first lines of books

“For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: fiction, Create Realms

“I find it most difficult to express with adequate force that flash, that shiver, that impact of passionate recognition.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Passion, Flash, Meeting Someone, When Words Fail

“Every limit presupposes something beyond it — hence the neutral illumination.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Beyond, Key Confirms The Prison, Lightness, Limits, Leave Society

“I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Tagged: Death, Identity, Water, anxiety in literature, what anxiety feels like