On Love and Passion

Nothing like love and passion to get the creative juices flowing. Go ahead, fall in love. Perhaps it’s the kind that lasts forever. If not, every one of those heartbreaks could become powerful art, poetry, and song, so don’t worry, enjoy the roller coaster ride. All the great songs and paintings and literature had their roots in a great romance.

Romantic writers delight in portraying the sensual movements of the tongue as it wets the lips or runs over the teeth or peeps coyly, coquettishly, but none as famously erotic as Nabokov’s opening lines: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

What swoon-worthy lines! And then we learn that Lolita was only 12 years old.