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Description
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. Lolita is also the story of a... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis
Summary
Humbert Humbert arrives in the USA to become a school teacher. He will be living with Charlotte Haze, the mother of 12 year old Dolores Haze (Lola, or Lolita, to Humbert). Humbert Humbert falls in love with the girl and decides to marry her mother in order to be close to her. After the sudden... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
Cast of Characters/Important People
Memorable Quotes
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“Sometimes, while Lolita would be haphazardly preparing her homework, sucking a pencil, lolling sideways in an easy chair with both legs over its arm, I would shed all my pedagogic restraint, dismiss all our quarrels, forget all my masculine pride - and literally crawl on my knees to your chair, my Lolita! You would give me one look - a gray furry question mark of a look: "Oh no, not again" (incredulity, exasperation); for you never deigned to believe that I could, without any specific designs, ever crave to bury my face in your plaid skirt, my darling! The fragility of those bare arms of yours - how I longed to enfold them, all your four limpid lovely limbs, a folded colt, and take your head between my unworthy hands, and pull the temple-skin back on both sides, and kiss your chinesed eyes, and - "Pulease, leave me alone, will you," you would say, "for Christ's sake leave me alone." And I would get up from the floor while you looked on, your face deliberately twitching in imitation of my tic nerveux. But never mind, never mind, I am only a brute, never mind, let us go on with my miserable story.”
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“...and there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her gooseflesh 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 else I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else.”
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“Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge or art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.”
First Sentence
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
Table of Contents
Authors & Contributors
- Vladimir Nabokov (Author)
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