How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Our innocence seems to me now almost monstrous [...] The slums of sex were unknown to us. Had we ever happened to hear about two normal lads idiotically masturbating in each other's presence (as described so sympathetically, with all the smells, in modern American novels), the mere notion of such an act would have seemed to us as comic and impossible as sleeping with an amelus. (10.2.9)
An "amelus" is a beetle, and that insect reference is quite the signal: Vladimir may be an above average in intelligence and bug knowledge, but he's also a kid in a world without Sex Ed.
Quote #5
I soon noticed that any evocation of the feminine form would be accompanied by the puzzling discomfort already familiar to me. I asked my parents about it [...] and my father ruffled the German newspaper he had just opened and replied in English (with the parody of a possible quotation—a manner of speech he often adopted in order to get going): "That, my boy, is just another of nature's absurd combinations, like shame and blushes, or grief and red eyes." (10.3.3)
Much about this book can seem absurd—what with its duels and exotic butterflies—but coming of age seems to be the most absurd of all, somehow. As Alice would say, "Curiouser and curiouser."
Quote #6
I had already entered an extravagant phase of sentiment and sensuality, that was to last about ten years. In looking at it from my present tower I see myself as a hundred different young men at once, all pursuing one changeful girl in a series of simultaneous or overlapping love affairs, some delightful, some sordid, that ranged from one-night adventures to protracted involvements and dissimulations, with very meager artistic results. (12.2.7)
Take a look at this sentence: did Nabokov truly ever leave extravagance behind? Shmoop gets the idea that it merely changed forms as he aged, from over-dramatic angst to high lyric gestures of language.