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Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

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Lolita

Written by Vladimir Nabokov, this novel is known for its complex narrative structure and controversial subject matter. It follows the protagonist's infatuation with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze, known as Lolita. The novel delves into the psychological and moral complexities of the relationship, while also examining the nature of love, desire, and innocence. more

Author

Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov

Russian-born American novelist, best known for his novel 'Lolita'. Nabokov is renowned for his unique literary style and profound use of language and symbolism. more

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“Beauty promises recognition, connection, and loftiness. It invites us to soar and transcend. Beauty lends magnitude to our lives, but we feel dislocated if we miss sense and substance. Its absence is like a fall from grace. Beauty is one of the last refuges against emptiness. Without it, we become void drifters in a barren world. (“Absence of Beauty is like Hell“ )”

“To be beautiful, handsome, means that you possess a power which makes all smile upon and welcome you; that everybody is impressed in your favor and inclined to be of your opinion; that you have only to pass through a street or to show yourself at a balcony to make friends and to win mistresses from among those who look upon you. What a splendid, what a magnificent gift is that which spares you the need to be amiable in order to be loved, which relieves you of the need of being clever and ready to serve, which you must be if ugly, and enables you to dispense with the innumerable moral qualities which you must possess in order to make up for the lack of personal beauty.”

“Tell me again about the girl whose hands have no color. Whose hands are completely white. This time make them damned, or untouched, or have her open a red umbrella or point at some maple leaves and damned near cry. Those hands. As freakish goes, I wish I had a tail. Maybe then you’d know how much I like you. It shakes me through, damn through. It shakes me. When she carries a peacock feather. When she touches her neck or thighs. You’re a person. It’s not so bad. You have hands. You are a person with hands to hold things. Things you like. Tremendous things. Tell me what you will hold today. I know there is room for everything. There is no need to be ceremonious. Tell what gets let go.”

“The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman can exact from her lover. If he appreciates her face and body because it is hers, that is next to worthless. It is very neat: The myth contrives to make women offend men by scrutinizing honest appreciation when they give it; it can make men offend women merely by giving them honest appreciation. It can manage to contaminate the sentence "You're beautiful," which is next to "I love you" in expressing a bond of regard between a woman and a man. A man cannot tell a woman that he loves to look at her without risking making her unhappy. If he never tells her, she is destined to be unhappy. And the "luckiest" woman of all, told she is loved because she's "beautiful," is often tormented because she lacks the security of being desired because she looks like who she lovably is.”

“There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees; and there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living, whose reason for being might be geographical but whose growth is based on industry, jobs. Detroit has its natural attractions: lakes all over the place, an abundance of trees and four distinct seasons for those who like variety in their weather, everything but hurricanes and earth-quakes. But it’s never been the kind of city people visit and fall in love with because of its charm or think, gee, wouldn’t this be a nice place to live.”