Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
My answer to your question'Does the writer have a social responsibility?' is NO.You owe me ten cents, sir. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“to play a solitary game of chequers, to read, to write – what should I do?” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“A writer is lost when he grows interested in such questions as 'what is art?' and 'what is an artist's duty?” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the firsta dull man writing broken English, the seconda broken man writing dull English. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Just as the universal family of gifted writers transcends national barriers, so is the gifted reader a universal figure, not subject to… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“I am aware of many things being quite as important as good writing and good reading; but in all things it is… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
I do not begin my novel at the beginning, I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, Tagore, Maxim Gorky, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann were being accepted… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what I'm going to write" - the novel starts… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both truth and art. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts; inability to… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child… My hemmings and hawings over… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“...under no circumstances would he [Humbert Humbert] have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the least risk of a row.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Ami azt illeti, Vannak kezdtek nagyon tetszeni a fák is, a csodák is meg az Adák is.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“It isn’t possible. I cannot imagine it. Come on over here, you foolish little doe, and tell me on what day I shall die.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Precautions to be taken in the case Of freak reincarnation: what to do On suddenly discovering that you Are now a young and vulnerable… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
![“...under no circumstances would he [Humbert Humbert] have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the least risk of a row.” quote by Vladimir Nabokov](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/0f0/vladimir-nabokov-198_children_under-no-circumstances-would-he-humbert_16228.jpg)
