Lolita quotes

View Quote Jean Farlow: [about Charlotte] She was a wonderful person, Humbert. She was always so gay, wasn't she, John?

View Quote Charlotte: Yeah, this would be your room. It's what you might call a studio - well, you know, a semi-studio affair ... it's very male - [sigh] - and, uh, quiet. We're really very fortunate here in West Ramsdale. Culturally, we're a very advanced group with lots of good Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-Scotch stock. And, uh, we're very progressive - intellectually.
Humbert: That is immediately apparent!
Charlotte: Oh, I do hope you'll want to address our club. There's a nice view from this window - of the front lawn, and a good place for you to do your writing. [gesturing] Shelves for your books...I am Chairman of the Great Books Committee. As a matter of fact, uh, you know, one of the speakers that I had, um, last season, was, uh, Clare Quilty...The writer, TV, TV play -
Humbert: No, no I wouldn't.
Charlotte: Oh, he's a very stimulating type of man. He gave us a talk on, hmm, uh, Dr. Schweitzer and Doctor Zhivago.

View Quote Jean Farlow: [to Humbert] Try to think of your poor little Lolita, all alone in the world. You must live for her sake.

View Quote Charlotte: I have a proposal. What say you I, uh, teach you some of the new steps, huh?
Humbert: Oh Charlotte, I don't even know the old ones. And you do this so very well, I'd much rather sit down and watch you. Very good.
Charlotte: Oh come on, Humbert. Ah, Humbert Humbert, what a thrillingly different name.
...
Charlotte: A little more joie de vivre! You know, when you smile like that, you remind me of someone. Oh, ah, a college boy I had, uh, a date with. I went dancing with him. A young, blue-blooded Bostonian. Oh, my very first glamour date. And you know, in certain lights, you remind me of Harold..I adored Harold, I really did. I swore at the time I would never marry again. I don't think I will, but, uh, it wouldn't be fair to his memory, do you think?
Humbert: No, one doesn't always find such loyalty these days.
Charlotte: Shouldn't life be for the living? What think you? You see, I'm a strongly emotional woman. Very strongly emotional. Oh, don't be afraid of hurting me...Take me in your arms! Oh, I can't live in the past, not any more Hum, not any more.
Lolita: Hi!
Charlotte: Darling, did you come back for something?
Lolita: Mona's party turned out to be sorta a drag. So I thought I'd come back and see what you two were doing.
Humbert: We had a wonderful evening. Your mother created a magnificent spread.

View Quote Humbert: All right, perhaps I was wrong in the attitude that I took about the school play.
Dr. Zempf: Zat's very big of you to admit that. And whilst you're admitting zat, why don't you alzo loozen up a little bit more in the other two 'd's' yah? The dating and the dance?
Humbert: You think that those are equally important?
Dr. Zempf: Dr. Hombards, I'll tell you about the two things. I feel that you and I should do all in our power to stop that old Dr. Cutler and his quartet of psychologists from fiddling around in the home situation. Zat's what I feel. Don't you agree with me?

View Quote Miss Lebone: [to Humbert] Well I think I ought to tell you that the neighbors are beginning to get a little curious about you and your little girl...You know how people talk.

View Quote Charlotte: [Humbert is locked in the bathroom] Dear, the door is locked. Sweetheart, I don't want any secrets between us. It makes me feel insecure.
Humbert: Can't this wait 'til I come out of here?
Charlotte: I suppose. Hum, what do you do in there so long? I want to talk to you.
Humbert: I haven't been here long. In point of fact, I only just came in.
Charlotte: Were there a lot of women in your life before me?
Humbert: I've told you about them already.
Charlotte: Well, you didn't tell me about all of them.
Humbert: Charlotte, if it would make you any happier, I will sit right down and I will make out a complete list of every woman I have ever known. Will that satisfy you?
Charlotte: Ohh, I'm lonesome...I think it's healthy for me to be jealous. It means that I love you. You know how happy I can make you.

View Quote [voiceover] The wedding was a quiet affair. And when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover, did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No. Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity, to some faint tenderness, even to a pattern of remorse, daintily running along the steel of his conspiratorial dagger.

View Quote [in a note to Humbert] 'This is a confession. I love you. Last Sunday in church, my dear one, when I asked the Lord what to do about it, I was told to act as I am acting now. You see, there is no alternative. I have loved you from the minute I saw you. I am a passionate and lonely woman. And you are the love of my life. Now you know. So you will please at once pack and leave. This is a landlady's order. I am dismissing the lodger. I am kicking you out. Go! Scram! Departez! I shall be back by dinnertime. I do not wish to find you in the house. You see, cherie, if you decided to stay, if I found you at home, which I know I won't, and that's why I'm able to go on like this, the fact of your remaining would only mean one thing. That you ... (He begins to hysterically and uncontrollably burst out laughing with a fiendish sound), that you want me as much as I do you, as a life-long mate. And you are ready to link up your life with mine forever and ever and be a father to my little girl. Goodbye, dear one, pray for me, if you've ever prayed.'

View Quote [to Humbert] Listen, I've decided something...I want to leave school...I don't want you to be mad at me anymore. Everything's gonna be great from now on...I hate school and I hate the play. I really do. I never want to go back...Let's leave tomorrow. We can go for a long trip and we'll go wherever I want to, won't we?

View Quote Lolita: Oh, there's no point in going into that! It's all over.
Humbert: Lolita. I have to know.
Lolita: Well, I'm sorry, but I can't tell you.
Humbert: ...If you're a sensible girl, and if you want what I've come to give you, you'll tell me what I want to know.
Lolita: Do you remember Dr. Zempf?...That German psychologist who came to see you at Beardsley.
Humbert: Was it him?
Lolita: Not exactly.
Humbert: I didn't come here to play guessing games. Tell me who it was.
Lolita: Well, give me a chance to explain...Do you remember that car that used to follow us around?...Do you remember mother's old flame at the school dance? No, you probably wouldn't remember him. Do you remember the guy that you talked to at that hotel on the way back from camp? He pretended that he was part of that police convention that was there...And do you remember that guy that called you at the hotel?
Humbert: The night you disappeared? Yes, I remember him very well.
Lolita: And yet you still haven't guessed.
Humbert: I told you that I'm not playing games with you. Tell me who it was.
Lolita: It was Clare Quilty.
Humbert: Who was Clare Quilty?
Lolita: All of them, of course.
Humbert: You mean Dr. Zempf, he was Clare Quilty?
Lolita: Well, congratulations. I don't suppose it ever occurred to you that when you moved into our house, my whole world didn't revolve around you. You see, I'd had a crush on him ever since the times that he used to come and visit mother. He wasn't like you and me. He wasn't a normal person. He was a genius. He had a kind of, uh, beautiful, Japanese, Oriental philosophy of life. You know that hotel that we stopped at on the way back from camp. Well, it was just by accident that he was staying there. But it didn't take him long to figure out what was going on between us. And from that moment on, he was up to every brilliant trick he could think of.
Humbert: And he did all these brilliant tricks for the sheer fun of tormenting me?
Lolita: Well, sometimes he had to. Like the German psychologist bit. He had to trick you into letting me be in his play. Otherwise, how would I ever get to see him?
Humbert: So that's why you wanted to be in the play.
Lolita: That's right.
Humbert: And all those afternoons you were supposed to be practicing the piano, you were actually with this man?
Lolita: Mmm, hmm. I guess he was the only guy I was ever really crazy about.
Humbert: Aren't you forgetting something?
Lolita: Oh, Dick. Dick's very sweet. We're very happy together, but I guess it's just not the same thing.
Humbert: And I? I suppose I never counted, of course.
Lolita: You have no right to say that. After all, the past is the past.
Humbert: What happened to this Oriental-minded genius?
Lolita: Look, don't make fun of me. I don't have to tell you a blasted thing.
Humbert: I am not making fun of you. I am merely trying to find out what happened. When you left the hospital, where did he take you?
Lolita: To New Mexico...to a dude ranch near Santa Fe. The only problem with it was, he had such a bunch of weird friends staying there...painters, nudists, writers, weight lifters. But I figured I could take anything for a couple of weeks because I loved him and he was on his way to Hollywood to write one of those spectaculars, and he promised to get me a studio contract. But it never turned out that way and instead, he wanted me to cooperate with the others making some kind of a, you know, an art movie.
Humbert: An art movie?...And you did it?
Lolita: No, I didn't do it. And so he kicked me out.
Humbert: You could have come back to me.

View Quote [to Humbert] Let go of me! You're hurting my arm! You let me go, you jerk! Let go of me!...You've got a big fat nerve dragging me away like that!...Who the heck do you think you are - not letting me go to my cast party? I wish the police do come in here. You creep!

View Quote [voiceover] The brakes were relined, the waterpipes unclogged, the valves ground. We had promised Beardsley School that we would be back as soon as my Hollywood engagement came to an end. Inventive Humbert was to be, I hinted, chief consultant in the production of a film dealing with existentialism, still a hot thing at the time. I cannot tell you the exact day when I first knew with utter certainty that a strange car was following us. **** how I misinterpreted the designation of doom.

View Quote [to Humbert, about his locked journal] 'Fraid somebody's gonna steal your ideas and sell 'em to Hollywood, huh?

View Quote Dr. Hombards - here, she is defiant...she sighs a gud deal in the class. She sighs, makes the zounds of 'uh-UHHHH!' Chews gum vehemently, alls the time is chewing dis gum, handles books gracefully, that's all right, doesn't really matter. Voice is pleasant. Giggles rathzer often and iz excitable. She giggles at things. A little dreamy. Conzentration is poor. She-she looks at a book for a while and then getza fed up with it. Has private jokes of her own which noone understands so they can't enjoy them mit her. She either has exceptional control or she has no control at all. We cannot decide which. Added to that - just yesterday, uh, Dr. Hombards, wrote a most obscene vord with her lipstick, if you please, on the health pamphlets. And so, in our opinion, she's suffering from acute repression of the libido of zee natural instincts.