Lolita

Lolita Quotes

A man marries his landlady so he can take advantage of her daughter.

[first lines]
Humbert: [voiceover] 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. Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin. My soul.
[whispered]
Humbert: Lolita.
Charlotte Haze: Do you believe in God?
Humbert Humbert: The question is does God believe in me?
Humbert: I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.
[last lines]
Humbert: [voiceover] What I heard then was the melody of children at play, nothing but that. And I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that chorus.
Humbert Humbert: You know, I've missed you terribly.
Lolita Haze: I haven't missed you. In fact, I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you.
Humbert Humbert: Oh?
Lolita Haze: But it doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway.
Humbert Humbert: What makes you say I've stopped caring for you?
Lolita Haze: Well, you haven't even kissed me yet, have you?
Lolita: You look one hundred percent better when I can't see you.
Lolita: I was a daisy fresh girl and look what you've done to me.
Clare Quilty: Where the devil did you get her?
Humbert: I beg your pardon?
Clare Quilty: I said, "The weather's getting better."
Humbert: Seems so.
Clare Quilty: Who's the lassie?
Humbert: Um - my daughter.
Clare Quilty: You lie, she is not.
Humbert: What?
Clare Quilty: I said "July was hot."
Humbert Humbert: I want you to live with me and die with me and everything with me!
Clare Quilty: She's a yellow belt. I'm a green belt. That's the way nature made it. What happens is, she throws me all over the place.
Swine: She throws you all over the place?
Clare Quilty: Yes. What she does, she gets me in a, sort of, thing called a sweeping ankle throw. She sweeps my ankles away from under me. I go down with one helluva bang.
Swine: Doesn't it hurt?
Clare Quilty: Well, I sort of lay there in pain, but I love it. I really love it. I lay there hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. It's really the greatest.
Humbert: Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me.
Humbert Humbert: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if my happiness could have talked it would have filled that hotel with a deafening roar.
Lolita Haze: [on her new husband] Dick's very sweet.
Lolita Haze: Do you always have to shave twice a day?
Humbert Humbert: Yes, of course, because all the best people shave twice a day.
Humbert: I missed you. I missed you a lot.
Lolita: Well I haven't missed you. In fact, I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. But it doesn't matter, because you don't care about me anymore anyway.
Humbert: What makes you think I don't care about you?
Lolita: Well you haven't kissed me yet, have you?
Humbert: A normal man, given a group photograph of school girls and asked to point out the loveliest one, will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them.
Humbert: From here to that old car you know so well is a stretch of twenty-five paces. Make those twenty-five steps. With me. Now.
Lolita: You're saying you'll give us the money if I go to a motel with you?
Humbert: No, no, no. I mean leave here now, and come live with me. And die with me, and everything with me.
Lolita: You're crazy.
Charlotte Haze: Hum, you just touch me and I... I... I go as limp as a noodle. It scares me.
Humbert Humbert: Yes, I know the feeling.
Miss Pratt: She's a lovely child, Mr. Haze, but the onset of sexual maturing seems to be giving her trouble. It is the general impression that 14-year-old Dolores is morbidly disinterested in sexual matters.
Lolita: Wait a sec. You're telling me we're sleeping in one room? With one bed?
Humbert: I've asked them to bring up a cot, which I'll use if you like.
Lolita: You're crazy.
Humbert: Why, my darling?
Lolita: Because, my darrr-ling, when my darrr-ling mother finds out she'll divorce you and strangle me.
Humbert: Lo, listen a moment. For all intents and purposes I am your father and I am responsible for your welfare. We are not rich, so when we travel, we shall be - we shall uh... we shall be thrown together a great deal. And two people who enter into a cohabitation inevitably lead into a kind of...
Lolita: The word is "incest".
Lolita Haze: 'Fraid someone's gonna steal your ideas and sell 'em to Hollywood, huh?
Humbert Humbert: What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet, of every nymphet perhaps, this mixture in my Lolita of tender, dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity. I know it is madness to keep this journal, but it gives me a strange thrill to do so. And only a loving wife could decipher my microscopic script.
Clare Quilty: He can smell if you're sweet. He likes sweet young people. People like you.
Humbert Humbert: Well, it's nothing, but... she had an accident.
Clare Quilty: Oh gee, she had an accident? That's really terrible, I mean, fancy a fellow's wife having... a normal guy having... his wife having an accident like that. W-what happened to her?
Humbert Humbert: Er, she was hit by a car.
Clare Quilty: Gee, no wonder she's not here. Gee, you must feel pretty bad about it. W-w-w-w-when uh eh w-what's happening, is she coming out later or something?
Humbert Humbert: Well, that was the understanding.
Clare Quilty: What, in an ambulance? Hahahaha! Gee, I'm sorry, I-I-I-shouldn't say that; I get sorta carried away, you know, being so normal and everything.
Charlotte Haze: I asked you to make your bed. Didn't I?
Lolita: No. You asked me if I'd made my bed.
[Of his childhood love, Annabel]
Humbert: The shock of her death froze something in me. The child I loved was gone, but I kept looking for her - long after I had left my own childhood behind. The poison was in the wound, you see. And the wound wouldn't heal.
Lolita: Murder me! Murder me like you murdered my mother!
[first lines]
Humbert Humbert: Quilty! Quilty?
Clare Quilty: Ah, wha? Who's there?
Humbert Humbert: Are you Quilty.
Clare Quilty: No, I'm... Spartacus. You come to free the slaves or sumpn?
Humbert Humbert: Are you Quilty?
Clare Quilty: Yeah, yeah, I'm Quilty, yeah, sure.
Humbert: How are the piano lessons going?
Lolita: Fine. Great. Excellent. Wonderful. Perfect.
Humbert: Especially since you missed the last two.
Humbert: We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing.
Humbert Humbert: [to Charlotte Haze] We don't read other people's diaries now, do we?
Clare Quilty: You are a foreigner, you are an agent of a foreign power, you're a foreign literary agent.
Miss Pratt: I know you have accepted a post at Beardsley College, and I know that there, academics are first, last, and always. Well, that's not us, Mister Humper. Here at Beardsley Prep... what we stress are the three Ds. Dramatics, Dancing, and Dating.
Humbert: I was not quite prepared for the reality of my dual role. On the one hand, the willing corruptor of an innocent, and on the other, Humbert the happy housewife.
Charlotte Haze: He is a writer and he is not be disturbed!
Lolita Haze: [makes the Nazi salute] Sieg heil!
Charlotte Haze: There's a nice view from this window... of the front lawn.
Lolita: Do not tell me you've never done as a boy.
Humbert: Never.
Lolita: I think I'll have to show you everything.
Clare Quilty: Listen, didn't you... didn't you have a daughter? Didn't you have a daughter with a lovely name? Yeah! A lovely... What was it now? A lovely, lyrical, lilting name, like, uh... uh...
Charlotte Haze: Lo-li-ta!
Clare Quilty: Lolita, that's right, Lolita. Diminutive of Dolores, "The Tears and the Roses."
Charlotte Haze: Wednesday she's going to have a cavity filled by your Uncle Ivor.
Clare Quilty: Yes. Hahahahaha... Yes.
Clare Quilty: [looks at bullet hole] Gee... right in the boxing glove.
Humbert: What are you eating?
Lolita: It's called a jawbreaker. It's supposed to break your jaw. Want one?
Lolita: I feel like we're grown-ups.
Humbert: Me, too.
Lolita: We get to do whatever we want, right?
Humbert: Whatever we want.
Lolita Haze: Why don't we play a game?
Humbert Humbert: A game? Come on. No, you get on to room service at once.
Lolita Haze: No, really. I learned some real good games in camp. One in "particularly" was fun.
Humbert Humbert: Well, why don't you describe this one in "particularly" good game?
Lolita Haze: Well, I played it with Charlie.
Humbert Humbert: Charlie? Who's he?
Lolita Haze: Charlie? He's that guy you met in the office.
Humbert Humbert: You mean that boy? You and he?
Lolita Haze: Yeah. You sure you can't guess what game I'm talking about?
Humbert Humbert: I'm not a very good guesser.
Lolita Haze: [whispers in his ear and giggles]
Humbert Humbert: I don't know what game you played.
Lolita Haze: [whispers in his ear again] You mean you never played that game when you were a kid?
Humbert Humbert: No.
Lolita Haze: Alrighty then...
Lolita Haze: [Trying to console Humbert] I'm really sorry that I cheated so much. But I guess that's just the way things are.
Title Card: [last title card] Epilog: Humbert Humbert died of coronary thrombosis in prison awaiting trial for the murder of Clare Quilty.
Humbert Humbert: [Referring to Quilty] What happened to this Oriental-minded genius? When you left the hospital, where did he take you?
Lolita Haze: To New Mexico.
Humbert Humbert: Whereabouts in New Mexico?
Lolita Haze: To a dude ranch near Santa Fe. The only problem with it was he had such a bunch of weird friends staying there.
Humbert Humbert: What kind of "weird" friends?
Lolita Haze: Weird! Painters, nudists, writers, weightlifters... But I figured I could take anything for a couple of weeks.
[last lines]
Humbert Humbert: Quilty! Quilty?
[the situation was increasingly uncomfortable]
[It was very special this feeling]
[a coercion oppressive, horrible]
[as I was sitting with a small ghost of someone who had killed]
Charlotte Haze: [to Humbert] Oh, you MAN!
Charlotte Haze: Is, um, Madame Humbert, um...
Humbert Humbert: There's no "Madame". We are divorced...
Charlotte Haze: Oh...
Humbert Humbert: *Happily* divorced.
Charlotte Haze: When did all this happen?
Humbert Humbert: About a year ago - in Paris.
Charlotte Haze: Oh, Paris, France, madame... You know, monsieur, I really believe that it's only in the Romance Languages that one is able to really relate in a mature fashion. In fact I remember when the late Mr. Haze and I... when we were on our honeymoon abroad, I knew that I'd never felt married until I'd heard myself addressed as "Senora".
Humbert Humbert: So you were in Spain?
Charlotte Haze: No, Mexico!
Humbert Humbert: Oh, Mexico, mm-hmm!

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