Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

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

Vladimir Nabokov

• Writing
• Imagination
• Poet
• Scientist

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Quotes to Explore

• I've always written songs that were confessional, acoustic, wordy - my writing style matches my personality. The music always has to match the mouth it comes out of.

  

  Camila Cabello Fifth Harmony
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Style

• I don't talk about Amy Winehouse as a 'singer.' She's a pioneer. I listened to her endlessly when I started writing.

  

  Laura Mvula
  • Writing
  • Talk
  • Singer

• I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.

  

  Callie Khouri
  • Writing
  • Women
  • Feel

• Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.

  

  Harlan Coben
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Book

• People say, 'How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?' No - you just become a faster songwriter... In the old days, you'd be like, 'Oh I'm gonna work on this song for a few days.'

  

  Eddie Vedder Pearl Jam
  • People
  • World
  • Work

• I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

  

  J. A. Jance
  • Time
  • Long
  • Writing

• Writing about a person whose struggle you wish you could solve is an act of compassion and also, frankly, opportunism.

  

  Karen Bender
  • Writing
  • Wish
  • Struggle

• I can ask for a £25,000 advance, but then you spend a year writing the book, and £25,000 is a loan against sales, and you can easily spend five years earning out. So that's £25,000 for six years.

  

  Mal Peet
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Year

• The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

  

  Carl Jung
  • Play
  • Imagination
  • Debt

• Writing does produce a very unique satisfaction. There are times when I'm writing that it's frustrating or appalling or difficult, but when it goes well, it goes really well, and there is a feeling of rightness, like I'm doing the thing I was meant to do, almost in a mystical way, like I'm at an appropriate angle to the world.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • World
  • Writing
  • Feeling

• You could take away the singing, and I am fine. But don't take away my gift of writing. It is the best way I can relate and express what I am feeling and what I am going through.

  

  BeBe Winans
  • Writing
  • Feeling
  • Singing

• I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.

  

  Taylor Jenkins Reid
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Book

• The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

  

  A. B. Yehoshua
  • Writing
  • Beginning
  • Process

• I mean, the wonderful thing about writing a book is that you're getting a finished product at the end of the day. You're communicating directly with the reader.

  

  Gary Ross
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Day

• A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over.

  

  Gary Oldman
  • Writing
  • Kids
  • Mother

• The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it.

  

  Patrick deWitt
  • Work
  • Thinking
  • Writing

• There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

  

  Edgar Allan Poe
  • Writing
  • Think
  • Song

• Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.

  

  Damon Albarn Gorillaz
  • Writing
  • Feeling
  • Yourself

• Autobiographies, for the most part, to me, are like writing a love letter to yourself.

  

  Paul Stanley Kiss
  • Writing
  • Autobiographies
  • Love Letter

• Embrace reality by imagination.

  

  Austin Osman Spare
  • Reality
  • Imagination
  • Embrace

• But what I realized when I was looking back at them was that no matter how different they are, they're still coming from me, and they're still coming from my brain and my set of obsessions. I think that no matter how different I tried to make them, there were just these certain questions that I just kept circling back to as I was writing. I think they were the ones I was really swept up in in that decade.

  

  Molly Antopol
  • Different
  • Writing
  • Looking

• Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. I know of no sculpture, painting or music that exceeds the compelling spiritual command of the soaring shape of granite cliff and dome, of patina of light on rock and forest, and of the thunder and whispering of the falling, flowing waters. At first the colossal aspect may dominate; then we perceive and respond to the delicate and persuasive complex of nature.

  

  Ansel Adams
  • Nature
  • Wonder
  • Painting

• You ever see 'The Dating Game'? That's a weird game show. The prize on that show: another contestant. Talk about cheap.

  

  Norm MacDonald
  • Prize
  • Cheap
  • Dating Game

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

  

  Vladimir Nabokov
  • Writing
  • Imagination
  • Poet