Vladimir Nabokov Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Jobs, Writing, Character

• The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Grows, Written

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1960). “Invitation to a beheading: a novel”, Putnam Adult

• The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Blank Mind, Feelings

  Vladimir Nabokov (2017). “Lectures on Literature”, p.379, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Writing, Should Have

• I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Revision, Pencils

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

• The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Character, Writing, Mind

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

• Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Pale Fire "Commentary" (1962)

• Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Book, Writing, Ideas

• The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Girl, Book, Writing

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, Fredson Bowers (1981). “Lectures on Russian literature”, Harcourt

• I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Writing, Thinking

  Strong Opinions (1973) foreword

• It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Sitting Still, Length

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1968). “Nabokov's congeries”

• Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Writing, Stories

  Vladimir Nabokov (2017). “Lectures on Literature”, p.5, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Running, Writing, Boys

  Lectures on Literature "Good Readers and Good Writers" (1980)

• Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Ambitious, Rough Drafts

• There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Moving, Writing, Trying

• My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Butterfly, Men

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

• Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Sheep, Reader

  "Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977".

• The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Reading, Writing, Pleasure

• No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Country, Writing, Past

  Vladimir Nabokov (2010). “Lolita”, p.314, Vintage

• Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Book, Writing, Brain

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1996). “Novels, 1969-1974”

• a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Men, Self

  VLADIMIR NABOKOV' (1965). “THE EYE”

• Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Movie, Writing, Long Ago

• Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Writing, Fiction

  "Lectures on Literature".

• My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Summer, Mother, Memories

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.3, Hamilton Books

• I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.... My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French. At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts.... In these circumstances nobody should ask me to submit to an interview if by "interview" a chat between two normal human beings is implied.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Distance, Party

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