Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

Whether I'm writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It's a way to stay busy during one's ephemeral and confusing life.

My parents, they were good, godly people, but they never said, You need to write.

With writing and publishing, my only aim is to live in the aesthetic pleasure dome.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy that kind of process.

I never enjoyed writing a book more; indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy.

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

I remember enjoying writing those, theres two clues of a gift: you enjoy doing it and people enjoy you doing it.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

When I sit down to write a book, I don't ask myself, "How many am I going to sell?"

Write for pleasure and publish for money.

I don't think it matters what the frequency is of me writing or directing a movie. It doesn't really matter to anybody else. I'm just trying to put good things out there.

This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today-explode-f ly-apart-disint egrate! The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, by reading your story, will catch fire, too?

Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in the sentence with creation of a family and the purchase of a home.

I wish thee as much pleasure in the reading, as I had in the writing.

Writing was my route to creative expression, and I needed to write about the things that interested me.

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.

I gotta pound the keys for the ideas to flow.

I don’t write things to benefit the world. If it happens that they do, swell. I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to have a hell of a lot of fun.

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.

I continue to write. It's just one of those things that I do. I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore and that's no good.

Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

That's the secret of how to enjoy writing and how to make yourself meet high standards," said Mrs. Berman. "You don't write for the whole world, and you don't write for ten people, or two. You write for just one person.