“You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy,
with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame
permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!),
in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs--the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone,
the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate
-the little deadly demon among the wholesome children;
he stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
