- "In our childhood we know a lot about hands since they live and hover at the level of our stature…" (5.4.1)
- Nabokov remembers Mademoiselle's hands—covered in liver spots—because she so often touched his face in his affection.
- Mademoiselle has all sorts of habits, and Vladimir watches as she peels a pencil into being sharp, scratches her ear with her pinky, or folds over the cover of a new composition book by pressing her thumb against the spine.