"She’s never where she is,” I said. “She’s only inside her head."
- White Oleander
(Source: bobcharley, via eff-0-rtless)
"This is how it has always been with me. Give me something good, I’ll destroy it. Love me, I’ll destroy you."
- James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"He suggested I play golf, but finally agreed to give me something that, he said, “would really work”; and going to a cabinet, he produced a vial of violet-blue capsules banded with dark purple at one end, which, he said, had just been placed on the market and were intended not for neurotics whom a draft of water could calm if properly administered, but only for great sleepless artists who had to die for a few hours in order to live for centuries."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"I haven’t missed you. In fact, I’ve been revoltingly unfaithful to you."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise - a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"
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 maze
I 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 McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among 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 weighs
With 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.
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you loved me thus!"
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"My Carmen,” I said (I used to call her that sometimes) “we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed.”
“… Because, really,” I continued, “there is no point in staying here.”
“There is no point in staying anywhere,” said Lolita."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"I’m really sorry that I cheated so much, but I guess that’s just the way things are."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
"I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn’t come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them then changed their minds. Forests of boys, their ragged shrubs full of eyes following you, grabbing your breasts, waving their money, eyes already knocking you down, taking what they felt was theirs. (…) It was a play and I knew how it ended. I didn’t want to audition for any of the roles. It was no game, no casual thrill. It was three-bullet Russian roulette."
- Janet Fitch, White Oleander
(Source: iwishihadanocean)
