- "lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. my sin, my soul. lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. lo. lee. ta. she was lo, plain lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. she was lola in slacks. she was dolly at school. she was dolores on the dotted line. but in my arms she was always lolita." (chap. 1 - part one)
- "suddenly i imagined lo returning from camp--brown, warm, drowsy, drugged--and was ready to weep with passion and impatience." (chap. 18 - part one)
- "perhaps, somewhere, someday, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again." (chap. 24 - part one)
- "oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! i am so tired of being cynical." (chap. 25 - part one)
- "don't think i can go on. heart, head--everything. lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita. repeat till the page is full, printer." (chap. 26 - part one)
- "- with your little claws, lolita." (chap. 2 - part two)
- "i still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise." (chap. 2 - part two)
- "and i catch myself thinking that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night--every night, every night--the moment i feigned sleep." (chap. 3 - part two)
- "a storm of sobs was filling my chest." (chap. 14 - part two)
- "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." (chap. 14 - part two)
- "both doomed were we." (chap. 19 - part two)
- "i would fight, of course. oh, i would fight. better destroy everything than surrender her. yes, quite a climb." (chap. 20 - part two)
- "my pulse was 40 one minute and 100 the next." (chap. 28 - part two)
- "you see, i loved her. it was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "[...] and for a moment--strangely enough the only merciful, endurable one in the whole interview--we were bristling at each other as if she were still mine." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "[...] and there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, there she was (my lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 a.d.--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." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "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; [...] even 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." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "- lolita, - i said - this may be neither here nor there but i have to say it. life is very 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." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "[...] and come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me." (chap. 29)
- "i covered my face with my hand and broke into the hottest tears i had ever shed. i felt them winding through my fingers and down my chin, and burning me, and my nose got clogged, and i could not stop, and then she touched my wrist. - i'll die if you touch me, - i said." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "she had never called me honey before." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "he broke my heart. you merely broke my life." (chap 29 - part two)
- "since i would not have survived the touch of her lips, i kept retreating in a mincing dance, at every step she and her belly made toward me." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "[...] i will create a brand new god and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "- good by-aye! - she changed, my american sweet immortal dead love; for she is dead and immortal if you are reading this." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "and presently i was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears." (chap. 29 - part two)
- "i was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past." (chap. 30 - part two)
- "you know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own" (chap. 32 - part two)
- "she would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom [...]" (chap. 32 - part two)
- "i loved you. i was a pentapod monster, but i loved you. i was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais! and there were times when i knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one. lolita girl, brave dolly schiller." (chap. 32 - part two)
- "but the awful point of the whole argument is this. it had become gradually clear to my conventional lolita during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best i could offer the waif." (chap. 32 - part two)
- "i stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then i knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord." (chap. 36 - part two)
- "and this is the only immortality you and i may share, my lolita." (chap. 36 - part two)
mar 12 2014 ∞
dec 3 2016 +