- Nabokov has created an incredibly engaging book which keeps you reading even though the events and images conjured are so nasty and discomforting. His amazing use of language - allusions, patterns, puns, etc - distracts and charms the reader and forces one to see the world through Humbert's eyes - making it more difficult to judge and hate him
- "Then, with perfect simplicity, the impudent child extended her legs across my lap. By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane"
- "...thrusting my fatherly fingers deep into Lo's hair from behind, and then gently but firmly clasping them around the nape of her neck, I would lead my reluctant pet to our small home for a quick connection before dinner."
- Realizes he is insane - "By psychoanalyzing this poem [his poem], I notice it is really a maniac's masterpiece. The stark, stiff, lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to certain perspectiveless and terrible landscapes and figure, and magnified parts of landscapes and figure, as drawn by psychopaths in tests devised by their astute trainers."
What I got out of it
- Twisted. I could not help but cringe at certain passages within this book. It is superbly written and not surprising that it received immediate, although often subdued, literary acclaim. Nobakov received a lot of resistance in America from publishers but was eventually able to publish it in France and the book's success soon made its way over to America.