Writing Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

“Ink, a Drug.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

My answer to your question'Does the writer have a social responsibility?' is NO.You owe me ten cents, sir.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the firsta dull man writing broken English, the seconda broken man writing dull English.

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together…

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it,…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes…

— Vladimir Nabokov

There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse—I…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“I will not mention the name (and what bits of it I happen to give here appear in decorous disguise) of that…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Unfortunately his urge to write had suddenly petered out and he did not know what to do with himself. He was not…

— Vladimir Nabokov

It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the…

— Vladimir Nabokov

A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child… My hemmings and hawings over…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“to play a solitary game of chequers, to read, to write – what should I do?”

— Vladimir Nabokov

“A writer is lost when he grows interested in such questions as 'what is art?' and 'what is an artist's duty?”

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

“How can I demonstrate [...] that I have glimpsed somebody's future recollection?”

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

— Vladimir Nabokov

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.

— Vladimir Nabokov

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“A sunset, almost formidable in its splendor, would be lingering in the fully exposed sky. Among its imperceptibly changing amassments, one could…

— Vladimir Nabokov

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic and dishonest pseudo-literature—these are obvious examples.…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, Tagore, Maxim Gorky, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann were being accepted…

— Vladimir Nabokov