Quotes4study

Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!

Vladimir Nabokov in Lolita (50th anniversary of its publication in the United States on 18 August 1958

I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.

Vladimir Nabokov (born 22 April 1899) {10 April O.S

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. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. 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.

Vladimir Nabokov

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

Vladimir Nabokov

And the rest is rust and stardust.

Vladimir Nabokov

Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.

Vladimir Nabokov

It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.

Vladimir Nabokov

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