Quotes from book

Lolita

“I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.”

“Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.”

“Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control.”

“Solitude was corrupting me. I needed company and care.”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.”

“Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me.”

“Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.”

“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.”

“There was no Lo to behold.”

“Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.”

“My little cup brims with tiddles.”

“There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.”

“We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.”

“Look at this tangle of thorns.”

“In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood.”

“Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?”