Lolita (1962) quotes

View Quote Humbert: It's partly my fault, I realize that. It's something that's happened on account of this horrible place. All these people poking their nose into our business. And I never see you anymore what with your soda-fountains and your extra-c...[she pops her gum] STOP DOING THAT! If we could leave this place perhaps. Yes, there's there's nothing to keep us here. We haven't any obligations here...We could just pack up our bags - TONIGHT! We could go now. I could take you for a wonderful trip around the country!...Don't you want to get back to where we were before we came to this horrible place? Don't you want to come away with me?
Lolita: NO! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!...WHY DON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?...DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! YOU'RE A NAUSEATING CREEP!
Humbert: You're not gonna see these filthy boys anymore, I can tell you that.
Lolita: I'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU. I'M GONNA DO ANYTHING I WANT TO, ANYTIME I WANT TO, WITH ANYBODY I WANT TO - AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME!

View Quote Humbert: Of course I need a shave, because I've not shaved since yesterday morning and I'm a man who (needs) two shaves a day.
Lolita: Hmm. Do you always have to shave twice a day?
Humbert: Yes, of course. All the best people shave twice a day.

View Quote Humbert: Quilty, Quilty.
Quilty: Wha? Wha? What's that?
Humbert: Are you Quilty?
Quilty: No, I'm Spartacus. Have you come to free the slaves or somethin'?
Humbert: Are you Quilty?
Quilty: Yeah, I am Quilty. Yes, sure.
Humbert: Shall we have a little chat before we start?

View Quote Humbert: There are no strings attached. It's only money anyway. It comes from the rent of the house - that's four hundred dollars in cash...I made out a check here for two thousand, five hundred dollars. There's someone in Ramsdale who's prepared to take care of the mortgage of the house. There's the downpayment. That's the payment.
Lolita: You mean we're getting thirteen thousand dollars? Wonderful. Oh, come on now, don't cry. I'm sorry. Try to understand. I'm really sorry that I cheated so much, but I guess that's just the way things are.
...
Lolita: Hey, well listen, let's keep in touch, huh? I'll write to you when we get to Alaska.

View Quote Humbert: This may be neither here nor there, but I've got to say it. Life is very short. Between here and that old car outside is twenty-five paces. Make them now, right now...Come away with me now, just as you are.
Lolita: Oh, you mean you'll give us the money only if I go to a hotel with you.
Humbert: No, you've got it all wrong. I want you to leave your husband and this awful house. I want you to live with me and die with me, and EVERYTHING with me.
Lolita: You must be crazy!
Humbert: I'm perfectly serious, Lo. I've never been less crazy in all my life. We'll start a-fresh. We can forget everything that has happened.
Lolita: No, it's too late.
Humbert: No, it's not too late...don't tell me that it's too late because it's not too late. If you want time to think it over, that's perfectly all right with me, because I've waited already for three years and I think I could wait for the rest of my life if necessary. You're not giving anything up. There's nothing here to keep you...You're not bound to him in any way, as you are bound to me by everything that we have lived through together - you and I.
Lolita: I'm going to have his baby in three months...I've wrecked too many things in my life. I can't do that to him. He needs me. [Humbert begins crying] Oh, come on, now don't make a scene. Stop crying! He could walk in here at any minute. Will you please stop crying?

View Quote Humbert: Try to stop crying. Everything's going to be all right.
Lolita: Nothing will ever be all right.
Humbert: I'm sure that we're gonna be very happy - you and I.
Lolita: But everything is changed all of a sudden. Everything was so, oh, I don't know, normal.
Humbert: Lolita, please, please stop crying. We'll do things, we'll go places.
Lolita: But there's no place to go back to.
Humbert: We'll find a new home.
Lolita: Where?
Humbert: Beardsley. My lectureship. It starts in September. It's in Ohio, you'll like it there.
Lolita: I'll hate it, I know I will.
Humbert: No you won't. It's a wonderful place.
Lolita: But what about all my things back in Ramsdale? And our house?
Humbert: We'll take care of all those things. What things do you want specially?
Lolita: My record player and my records.
Humbert: We'll send for them and, in the meantime, I can buy you new ones... ...to take the place of the old ones. I'll buy you the best hi-fi set that you ever saw and all the new records. There, there.
Lolita: We can't stay in Beardsley forever. Where's that handkerchief? Promise me something? [curling up in his lap] Promise you'll never leave me. I don't want to ever be in one of those horrible places for juvenile delinquents...And anyway, I'd rather be with you. You're a lot better than one of those places. You will promise, won't you?
Humbert: Cross my heart and hope to die. Cross my heart and hope to die. Cross my heart and hope to die.

View Quote 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?

View Quote John: [to Humbert, about Charlotte] Mind if I dance with your girl? We could, um, sort of swap partners. [they leave to dance]
Jean: Did you know that you've had the most remarkable effect on her. Did you know that?...she's begun to radiate a certain glow. When you get to know me better, you'll find I'm extremely broad-minded...In fact, John and I, we're both broad-minded.

View Quote Lolita: ...I-I learned some real good games in camp. One in particular-ly was fun.
Humbert: Well, why don't you describe this one in particular-ly - good game?
Lolita: Well, I played it with Charlie...Charlie? He's that guy that you met in the office.
Humbert: You mean that boy...?
Lolita: Mmm, hmm.
Humbert: You and he?
Lolita: Yeah. You sure you can't guess what game I'm talking about?
Humbert: No, I'm not a very good guesser. [She whispers in his ear and then giggles] I don't know what game you played. [She whispers a few more words]
Lolita: You mean you never played that game when you were a kid?
Humbert: Oh, no.
Lolita: [smiling] All righty then...

View Quote Lolita: [about a secret she has with her friend Mona] You'll blab.
Humbert: I will never give away any of your secrets.
Lolita: Well, for that, you get a little reward. [She dangles a fried egg above his open mouth] You can have one little bite.

View Quote Lolita: [entering the hotel room, which has only one bed] Is, uh, this it?
Humbert: You mean, uh...
Lolita: Yeah.
Humbert: Well, yes. You see, I-I-I-I-I, I'm quite sure that they'll manage to find a cot for us. I asked them downstairs in the lobby to find a cot.
Lolita: A cot?
Humbert: Yes.
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.
Humbert: Yes, now look, now. I have a great feeling of, um, tenderness for you. While your mother is ill, I'm responsible for your welfare. We're not rich, but while we travel, we should be obliged - we should be thrown a good deal together - two people sharing one room inevitably enter into a kind of, um, how should I say? A kind of, hmm...
Lolita: Aren't you going to go down and see about the cot?

View Quote Lolita: Did you have a good time dancing with Clare Quilty?
Charlotte: Of course. He's a very erudite gentleman.
Lolita: Yeah, I know. All the girls are crazy about him, too.
Charlotte: That's neither here nor there.
Lolita: Since when?

View Quote Lolita: Hey, let's tell mother.
Humbert: Tell mother what?
Lolita: [she smiles knowingly] You know what.
Humbert: No, I don't think that would be very funny.
Lolita: [laughing] I wonder what she'd do? Hmm?

View Quote Lolita: Oh, there's no point in going into that! It's all over.
Humbert: Lolita. I have to know.
Lolita: Well, I'm sorry, but I can't tell you.
Humbert: ...If you're a sensible girl, and if you want what I've come to give you, you'll tell me what I want to know.
Lolita: Do you remember Dr. Zempf?...That German psychologist who came to see you at Beardsley.
Humbert: Was it him?
Lolita: Not exactly.
Humbert: I didn't come here to play guessing games. Tell me who it was.
Lolita: Well, give me a chance to explain...Do you remember that car that used to follow us around?...Do you remember mother's old flame at the school dance? No, you probably wouldn't remember him. Do you remember the guy that you talked to at that hotel on the way back from camp? He pretended that he was part of that police convention that was there...And do you remember that guy that called you at the hotel?
Humbert: The night you disappeared? Yes, I remember him very well.
Lolita: And yet you still haven't guessed.
Humbert: I told you that I'm not playing games with you. Tell me who it was.
Lolita: It was Clare Quilty.
Humbert: Who was Clare Quilty?
Lolita: All of them, of course.
Humbert: You mean Dr. Zempf, he was Clare Quilty?
Lolita: Well, congratulations. I don't suppose it ever occurred to you that when you moved into our house, my whole world didn't revolve around you. You see, I'd had a crush on him ever since the times that he used to come and visit mother. He wasn't like you and me. He wasn't a normal person. He was a genius. He had a kind of, uh, beautiful, Japanese, Oriental philosophy of life. You know that hotel that we stopped at on the way back from camp. Well, it was just by accident that he was staying there. But it didn't take him long to figure out what was going on between us. And from that moment on, he was up to every brilliant trick he could think of.
Humbert: And he did all these brilliant tricks for the sheer fun of tormenting me?
Lolita: Well, sometimes he had to. Like the German psychologist bit. He had to trick you into letting me be in his play. Otherwise, how would I ever get to see him?
Humbert: So that's why you wanted to be in the play.
Lolita: That's right.
Humbert: And all those afternoons you were supposed to be practicing the piano, you were actually with this man?
Lolita: Mmm, hmm. I guess he was the only guy I was ever really crazy about.
Humbert: Aren't you forgetting something?
Lolita: Oh, Dick. Dick's very sweet. We're very happy together, but I guess it's just not the same thing.
Humbert: And I? I suppose I never counted, of course.
Lolita: You have no right to say that. After all, the past is the past.
Humbert: What happened to this Oriental-minded genius?
Lolita: Look, don't make fun of me. I don't have to tell you a blasted thing.
Humbert: I am not making fun of you. I am merely trying to find out what happened. When you left the hospital, where did he take you?
Lolita: To New Mexico...to a dude ranch near Santa Fe. The only problem with it was, he had such a bunch of weird friends staying there...painters, nudists, writers, weight lifters. But I figured I could take anything for a couple of weeks because I loved him and he was on his way to Hollywood to write one of those spectaculars, and he promised to get me a studio contract. But it never turned out that way and instead, he wanted me to cooperate with the others making some kind of a, you know, an art movie.
Humbert: An art movie?...And you did it?
Lolita: No, I didn't do it. And so he kicked me out.
Humbert: You could have come back to me.

View Quote Lolita: Well, I guess I won't be seeing you again, huh?
Humbert: I shall be moving on. I must prepare for my work at Beardsley College in the fall.
Lolita: Then I guess this is goodbye.
Humbert: Yes.
Lolita: [She half-winks at him and races off] Don't forget me.