“For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in "Dolores." My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname "Haze," where Irish mists blend with a German bunny—I mean, a small German hare.”

“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.”

“Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.Age: five thousand three hundred days.Profession: none, or "starlet"Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?Why are you hiding, darling?(I Talk in a daze, I walk in a mazeI cannot get out, said the starling).Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?What make is the magic carpet?Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?And where are you parked, my car pet?Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?Still one of those blue-capped star-men?Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!Are you still dancin', darlin'?(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,And I, in my corner, snarlin').Happy, happy is gnarled McFateTouring the States with a child wife,Plowing his Molly in every StateAmong the protected wild life.My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,And never closed when I kissed her.Know an old perfume called Soliel Vert?Are you from Paris, mister?L'autre soir un air froid d'opera m'alita;Son fele -- bien fol est qui s'y fie!Il neige, le decor s'ecroule, Lolita!Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie?Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.And again my hairy fist I raise,And again I hear you crying.Officer, officer, there they go--In the rain, where that lighted store is!And her socks are white, and I love her so,And her name is Haze, Dolores.Officer, officer, there they are--Dolores Haze and her lover!Whip out your gun and follow that car.Now tumble out and take cover.Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.Ninety pounds is all she weighsWith a height of sixty inches.My car is limping, Dolores Haze,And the last long lap is the hardest,And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,And the rest is rust and stardust.”

“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.”

“It is indeed a tricky name. It is often misspelt, because the eye tends to regard the "a" of the first syllable as a misprint and then tries to restore the symmetrical sequence by triplicating the "o"- filling up the row of circles, so to speak, as in a game of crosses and naughts. No-bow-cough. How ugly, how wrong. Every author whose name is fairly often mentioned in periodicals develops a bird-watcher's or caterpillar-picker's knack when scanning an article. But in my case I always get caught by the word "nobody" when capitalized at the beginning of a sentence. As to pronunciation, Frenchmen of course say Nabokoff, with the accent on the last syllable. Englishmen say Nabokov, accent on the first, and Italians say Nabokov, accent in the middle, as Russians also do. Na-bo-kov. A heavy open "o" as in "Knickerbocker". My New England ear is not offended by the long elegant middle "o" of Nabokov as delivered in American academies. The awful "Na-bah-kov" is a despicable gutterism. Well, you can make your choice now. Incidentallv, the first name is pronounced Vladeemer- rhyming with "redeemer"- not Vladimir rhyming with Faddimere (a place in England, I think).”

“Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might find, whatever lithophanic eternities might be provided for me, nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted upon her. Unless it can be proven to me -to me as I am now, today, with my heart and my beard, and my putrefaction- that in the infinitue run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child names Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art. To quote an old poet: The moral sense in mortals is the dutyWe have to pay on mortal sense of beauty.”

“Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.”