Top 50 Quotes From Lolita

Humbert: [Referring to Quilty] What happened to this Oriental-minded genius? When you left the hospital, where did he take you?
Lolita: To New Mexico.
Humbert: Whereabouts in New Mexico?
Lolita: To a dude ranch near Santa Fe. The only problem with it was he had such a bunch of weird friends staying there.
Humbert: What kind of "weird" friends?
Lolita: Weird! Painters, nudists, writers, weightlifters... But I figured I could take anything for a couple of weeks.

Lolita: 'Fraid someone's gonna steal your ideas and sell 'em to Hollywood, huh?

Clare: Ow, right in the head!

Dr. Zempf: Has anybody instructed Lolita in the facts of life?
Humbert: The facts?
Dr. Zempf: The facts of life. You see, Lolita is a sweet, little child, but the onset of maturity seems to be giving her a certain amount of trouble.
Humbert: I really don't think that this is a fit topic.
Dr. Zempf: Well, Dr. Humbert, to you she is still the little girl that is cradled in the arms. But, to those boys over there at the Beardsley High, she is a lovely girl, you know with the swing, you know, and the jazz, and she has got the curvatures which they take a lot of notice of.

Lolita: Do you really shave twice a day?
Humbert: [affronted] The best people shave twice a day!

Humbert: You know, I've missed you terribly.
Lolita: I haven't missed you. In fact, I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you.
Humbert: Oh?
Lolita: But it doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway.
Humbert: What makes you say I've stopped caring for you?
Lolita: Well, you haven't even kissed me yet, have you?

Humbert: I want you to live with me and die with me and everything with me!

Clare: You are either Australian or a German refugee. This is a gentile's house. You'd better run along.

Lolita: What happened to your bed? It looks a lot lower.
Humbert: Well, the bed collapsed. It's a collapsible bed.

Humbert: Would you like me to read you some poetry?
Lolita: Sure, why not?
Humbert: This is my favorite poet. "It was..."
Lolita: Who's the poet?
Humbert: The divine Edgar.
Lolita: Who's the divine Edgar. Edgar who?
Humbert: Edgar Allan Poe, of course. "It was night in the lonesome October, Of my most immemorial year." Notice how he emphasizes this word. "It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir" You see, he takes a word like "dim" in one line and twists it. You see? And it comes back as "mid region of Weir."
Lolita: "Mid region," and twists it to "dim." That's pretty good, pretty clever.
Humbert: "Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, And conquered her scruples and gloom, And we passed to the end of the vista, But were stopped by the door of a tomb, And I said, 'What is written, sweet sister?' She replied, 'Ulalume, Ulalume."'
Lolita: Well, I think it's a little corny, to tell you the truth.
Humbert: What do you object to?
Lolita: Well, the "vista-sister," that's like, "Lolita-sweeter."
Humbert: That's very true. That's a very acute observation. If you were in my class I would give you an A plus.

Lolita: What shall we do now?

Lolita: Do you always have to shave twice a day?
Humbert: Yes, of course, because all the best people shave twice a day.

Lolita: [Trying to console Humbert] I'm really sorry that I cheated so much. But I guess that's just the way things are.

Charlotte: Oh M'sieur, if what you're needing is peace and quiet, I can assure you you couldn't get more peace anywhere, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Humbert: Queer how I misinterpreted the designation of doom.

Humbert: Don't smudge your toenails!

Humbert: [to Charlotte Haze] We don't read other people's diaries, do we?

Lolita: [on her new husband] Dick's very sweet.

Lolita: What's the matter with you anyway? You look kind of slimy.

Clare: Hey, you're a sort of bad loser, Captain. I never found a guy who'd sort of pull a gun on me when he lost a game. Didn't anyone ever tell you - it's not really who wins, it's how you play, like the champs. Listen, I don't think I want to play anymore. I wanna get a drink. Gee, I'm just dying for a drink. I'm just dying to have a drinkie.
Humbert: You're dying anyway, Quilty.

Dr. Zempf: I have not made my point quite clear. I have some other details which I would like to put to you, Dr. Humbert. Here. "She is defiant and rude. Sighs a good deal in the class." She sighs, makes the sound of: Haaa! "Chews gum vehemently." All the time she is chewing this gum. "Handles books gracefully." This is alright. That doesn't really matter. "Voice is pleasant. Giggles rather often and is excitable." She giggles at things. "A little dreamy. Concentration is poor." She looks at the book for a while and then she gets fed up with it. "Has private jokes of her own." Which no one understands so they can't enjoy them with her. "She either has exceptional control or she has no control at all." We cannot decide which. Added to that, just yesterday, Dr. Humbert, she wrote a most obscene word with the lipstick, if you please, on the health pamphlets. And so, in our opinion, she is suffering from acute repression of the libido - of the natural instincts.

Charlotte: [to Humbert] Oh, you MAN!

Charlotte: Is, um, Madame Humbert, um...
Humbert: There's no "Madame". We are divorced...
Charlotte: Oh...
Humbert: *Happily* divorced.
Charlotte: When did all this happen?
Humbert: About a year ago - in Paris.
Charlotte: 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: So you were in Spain?
Charlotte: No, Mexico!
Humbert: Oh, Mexico, mm-hmm!

Humbert: Well, it's nothing, but... she had an accident.
Clare: 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: Er, she was hit by a car.
Clare: 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: Well, that was the understanding.
Clare: 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.

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.

Lolita: You will promise, won't you?
Humbert: Yes, I promise.
Lolita: Cross your heart and hope to die?
Humbert: Cross my heart and hope to die. Cross my heart and hope to die. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Clare: 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: 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: 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.

Lolita: He wasn't like you and me. He wasn't a normal person. He was a genius. He had a kind of beautiful Japanese oriental philosophy of life.

Lolita: You're crazy.
Humbert: Why, my darling?
Lolita: Because, my darling, when my darling mother finds out she's going to divorce you and strangle me.

Lolita: You'll have to excuse my appearance, but you've caught me on ironing day.

Humbert: I'm going to ask you something about Michele.
Lolita: You can't have her. She belongs to a Marine.
Humbert: I will ignore that idiotic joke.

Clare: 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: Lo-li-ta!
Clare: Lolita, that's right, Lolita. Diminutive of Dolores, "The Tears and the Roses."
Charlotte: Wednesday she's going to have a cavity filled by your Uncle Ivor.
Clare: Yes. Hahahahaha... Yes.

Humbert: I don't want you around them. They're nasty-minded boys.
Lolita: Oh! You're a fine one to talk about someone else's mind.

Clare: [looks at bullet hole] Gee... right in the boxing glove.

[first lines]
Humbert: Quilty! Quilty?
Clare: Ah, wha? Who's there?
Humbert: Are you Quilty.
Clare: No, I'm... Spartacus. You come to free the slaves or sumpn?
Humbert: Are you Quilty?
Clare: Yeah, yeah, I'm Quilty, yeah, sure.

Clare: Jeez! All my friends always put their smokies out in the drink. It's so unsanitary.

Charlotte: There's a nice view from this window... of the front lawn.

Dr. Zempf: We Americans - we are progressively modern. We believe that it is equally important to prepare the pupils for the mutually satisfactory mating and the successful child rearing.

Humbert: I told you no dates!
Lolita: It wasn't a date.
Humbert: It was a date!
Lolita: It wasn't a date!
Humbert: It was a date, Lolita.
Lolita: It was not a date.
Humbert: It was a date!
Lolita: It wasn't a date.
Humbert: Well, whatever you had yesterday, I don't want you to have it again.

Clare: Gee, I'm really winning here! I'm really winning. I hope I don't get overcome with power.

Lolita: Why don't we play a game?
Humbert: A game? Come on. No, you get on to room service at once.
Lolita: No, really. I learned some real good games in camp. One in "particularly" was fun.
Humbert: Well, why don't you describe this one in "particularly" good game?
Lolita: Well, I played it with Charlie.
Humbert: Charlie? Who's he?
Lolita: Charlie? He's that guy you met in the office.
Humbert: You mean that boy? You and he?
Lolita: Yeah. You sure you can't guess what game I'm talking about?
Humbert: I'm not a very good guesser.
Lolita: [whispers in his ear and giggles]
Humbert: I don't know what game you played.
Lolita: [whispers in his ear again] You mean you never played that game when you were a kid?
Humbert: No.
Lolita: Alrighty then...

Humbert: Read it.
Clare: I can't read, mister. I never did none of that there book learning, you know.
Humbert: Read it, Quilty.
Clare: "Because you took advantage of a sinner." "Because you took advantage." "Because you took." "Because you took advantage of my disadvantage." Hey, that's a dad-blasted, darn good poem you done there. "When I stood Adam-naked." Oh! Adam-naked! You should be ashamed of yourself, Captain. "Before a federal law and all its stinging stars." Tarnation! You old horn toad. That's mighty pretty. That's a pretty poem. "Because you took advantage." It's getting a bit repetitious, isn't it? "Because." Another one. "Because you cheated me." "Because you took her at an age when young lads - "
Humbert: That's enough.
Clare: Say, why'd you take it away for, Mister? That was gettin' kinda smutty there.

Charlotte: I forbid you to disturb Professor Humbert again. He is a writer and he is not to be disturbed.
Lolita: [makes the Nazi salute] Sieg heil!

Lolita: You never let me have any fun.
Humbert: No fun? You have all the fun in the world! We have fun together, don't we? Whenever you want something, I buy it for you automatically. I take you to concerts, to museums, to movies. I do all the housework! Who does the tidying up? I do! Who does the cooking? I do! You and I, we have lots of fun, don't we, Lolita?
Lolita: Come here.

Humbert: Lolita is attending an excellent school where I hope that she will be persuaded to read other things than comic books and movie romances.

Lolita: I don't suppose it ever occurred to you that when you moved into our house my whole world didn't revolve around you.

Charlotte: Hum, you just touch me and I... I... I go as limp as a noodle. It scares me.
Humbert: Yes, I know the feeling.

Title: [last title card] Epilog: Humbert Humbert died of coronary thrombosis in prison awaiting trial for the murder of Clare Quilty.

[last lines]
Humbert: Quilty! Quilty?

Charlotte: Do you believe in God?
Humbert: The question is does God believe in me?