Finished Lolita which was begun exactly five years ago.
—from a diary entry made on this day in 1953 by Vladimir Nabokov
That my novel does contain various allusions to the physiological urges of a pervert is quite true. But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated editions.
—from Nabokov’s 1956 article, “On a Book Entitled Lolita”
