Humbert Humbert Quotes

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“My little cup brims with tiddles.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Rope-skipping, hopscotch. That old woman in black who sat down next to me on my bench, on my rack of joy (a nymphet was groping under me for a lost marble), and asked if I had stomachache, the insolent hag. Ah, leave me alone in my pubescent park, in my mossy garden. Let them play around me forever. Never grow up.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“The softness and fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain. She wanted to be a nurse in some famished Asiatic country; I wanted to be a famous spy.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“His brown eyes would roam around the various sentimental and artistic bric-a-brac present, and his own banal toiles (the conventionally primitive eyes, sliced guitars, blue nipples and geometrical designs of the day), and with a vague gesture toward a painted wooden bowl or veined vase, he would say "Prenez donc une des ces poires. La bonne dame d'en face m'en offre plus que je n'en peux savourer." Or: "Mississe Taille Lore vient de me donner ces dahlias, belles fleurs que j'exècre.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“What chance has a lonely surfer boy
For the love of a surfer chick,
With all these Humbert Humbert cats
Coming on so big and sick?
For me, my baby was a woman.
For him she’s just another nymphet.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49