“Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.”

“Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.”

“Let me repeat with quite force: I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow moving tall, with dark soft hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanour.”

“Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impression that I did not manage to be happy.”

“There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.”

“I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.”

“Lolita: Oh my Carmen, my little Carmen…Humbert: Charmin’ Carmen. Started garglin’Lolita: I remember those sultry nightsHumbert: Those pre-raphaelitesLolita: No, come on. And the stars and the cars and the bars and the barmen.Humbert: And the bars that sparkled and the cars that parkled…And the curs that barkled and the birds that larkled.Lolita: And oh my charmin, our dreadful fightsHumbert: Such dreadful blightsLolita: And the something town where arm in…arm, we went, and our final row, and the gun I killed you with, o my Carmen…the gun I am holding now”