In his pocket diary that he kept at Ramsdale as Charlotte's lodger Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) compares himself to an inflated pale spider that sits in the middle of a luminous web and gives little jerks to this or that strand:
According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955), Gaston Godin (Humbert's friend and chess partner at Beardsley) got involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places:
According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript), Humbert Humbert had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start:
Among the books that Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) brings Lolita (who fell ill and was hospitalized in Elphinstone, a small town in the Rocky Mountains) to the hospital is The Russian Ballet:
When Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) alludes to Lolita's comparatively recent flu, Dr Blue (the chief physician in the Elphinstone hospital) curtly says that this is another bug, he has forty such cases on his hands:
In the “cryptogrammic paper chase” that Clare Quilty prepares for Humbert's frustration and loads with theatrical allusions Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) discovers the silly but funny “D. Orgon, Elmira, NY:”
Describing his visit to Ivor Quilty (the Ramsdale dentist), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentally tells Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) “Réveillez-vous, Laqueue, il est temps de mourir! (Wake up, Laqueue, it is time to die!):"
Describing his visit to Ivor Quilty (the Ramsdale dentist), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) says that he had been keeping Clare Quilty’s face masked in his dark dungeon, where Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) was waiting for him to come with barber and priest:
Describing his second road trip with Lolita across the USA, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) exclaims "O lente currite noctis equi! (O softly run, nightmares!):"