Lolita quotes

Question 1

Where does John Ray say HH dies?

Answer 1

‘legal captivity’

Question 2

What does John Ray call the book?

Answer 2

a ‘remarkable memoir’

Question 3

Nabokov in the John Ray

Answer 3

“Vivian Darkbloom” has written a biography, “My Cue”, to be published shortly’

Question 4

HH poetic address to the reader

Answer 4

‘O, Reader, My Reader, guess!’ (II. 2. 154)

Question 5

Poets never …

Answer 5

‘Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill.’ (I. 20. 88)

Question 6

Final poem

Answer 6

‘By psychoanalysing this poem, I notice it really is a maniac’s masterpiece.’ followed by literary analysis

Question 7

What does HH call Fate?

Answer 7

McFate - taken from the class list p52 (I. 11)

Question 8

Water

Answer 8

“Waterproof,” said Charlotte softly, making a fish mouth.’ (1. 20. p89)

Question 9

Eg of McFate?

Answer 9

‘One wonders if this sudden spasmodic refund was not correlated somehow, in the mind of McFate’ p107

Question 10

Lolita’s clothes in the hotel room were

Answer 10

‘in various attitudes of enchantment’

Question 11

Lolita’s normality

what and where?

Answer 11

‘a disgustingly conventional little girl’
‘a most exasperating brat’
II. 1. 148

Question 12

Lolita’s consumerism

what and where

Answer 12

‘She it was to whom the ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer’
‘If a roadside sign said VISIT OUR GIFTSHOP – we had to visit it.’
II. 1. 148

Question 13

Annabel Leigh

Answer 13

‘there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child’ p9

Question 14

Lolita’s wit

Answer 14

her use of french to mock HH and her mother

HH calls her ‘Loquacious Lo’ p140

Question 15

Eg of HH’s delusion

Annabel

Answer 15

‘I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion’ (15)

Question 16

HH as a sinner

Answer 16

‘wedged my weary and bestial way’ p55

‘my abject body’ p41

Question 17

HH’s portrayal of Charlotte

Answer 17

After a fight he says ‘She said I was her ruler and her god.’ (91)

Question 18

What does Humbert have?

Answer 18

‘Oh, my Lolita, I have only word to play with!’ I . 8. 32

Question 19

HH’s memory

Answer 19

‘Being a murderer w/ a sensational and but incomplete and unorthodox memory’ (II. 18. 217)
‘But I am no poet. I am only a very conscientious recorder. (I. 17. 72)

Question 20

HH’s alien accent

Answer 20

‘[The reader will notice what pains I took to speak Lo’s tongue]…[Lo: “Of my what? Speak English.] p149

Question 21

What does HH call Lolita’s smile?

Answer 21

an ‘ancient rite of welcome – hospitable prostitution’ p285

Question 22

Sexual gun

Answer 22

‘my unused weapon’ p270

‘the pistol’s foreskin…the orgasm of the crushed trigger’ p274

Question 23

Hands

Answer 23

‘I have hurt too many bodies with my twisted poor hands to be proud of them.’ p274

Question 24

Final love of Lolita

II. 31

Answer 24

‘I loved you. I was a pentapod monster. But I loved you.’

Question 25

Part II. Chap 1

Opening as a Western and consumer culture

Answer 25

‘It was then that we began our extensive travels all over the states…’

Question 26

The places they stay, where does it say this?

Answer 26

Part II. Chap 1
‘Functional Motel’, ‘stormy cottages’, ‘whitewashed clapboard Kabins’
‘enticements of all their repetitious names’

Question 27

Shopping for Lolita, why is this significant?

Answer 27

‘There is a touch of the mythological and the enchanted in those stores’ - it is this afternoon that makes him think of The Enchanted Hunter that Charlotte mentioned

Question 28

Nymphets

Answer 28

‘In fact, I would have the reader see “nine” and “fourteen” as the boundaries–the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks–of an enchanted island haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast, misty sea.’ p16
‘little deadly demon’
‘nymphet’s spell’

Question 29

Address to the printer

II. 26

Answer 29

‘Repeat till the page is full, printer.’

Question 30

Lo’s choice of rooms

Answer 30

‘Lo’s pre-dilection for “real” hotels’
‘some highly recommended lake lodge’
II. 1. 146