lolita quote

[Jasper Fidget]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of Burns, Erik
> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 12:12 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: re: lolita quote
> 
> betsy yoon wrote:
> 
> >Does anyone have (or know where I can find) that quote from Lolita that
> >occurrs after he sees her while pregnant, and he's driving off to
> quilty's
> >house, and he's like 'oh lolita, even if your eyes were to fade to myopic
> >fish and your breasts were to sag and your delta torn and etc. I would
> still
> >love you my lolita."?   I am in a foreign country without access to this
> >crap and I'm trying to prove a point to some reslient people.
> 
> you're pretty close!
> [...]

Here's a fatter one:

"Somewhere beyond Bill's shack an afterwork radio had begun singing of folly
and fate, and there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined
narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her
unkempt arm-pits, there she was (my Lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen,
with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring
around 2020 A.D. -- and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I
know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or
imagined on earth, or hoped for  anywhere else. She was only the faint
violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with
such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far
wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last
cricket in the crisp weeds... but thank God it was not that echo alone that
I worshiped.  What I used to pamper among the tangled vines of my heart,
_mon grand péché radieux_, had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish
vice, all _that_ I canceled and cursed.  You may jeer at me, and threaten to
clear the court, but until I am gagged and half-throttled, I will shout my
poor truth.  I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, _this_
Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another's child, but still
gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita,
still mine; _Changeons de vie, ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque part où nous
ne serons jamais séparés; Ohio?  The wilds of Massachusetts?  No matter,
even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell
and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn
-- even then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear
wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita." (Random
House 277-278)