The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.

Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise; And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.

I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.