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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

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Vladimir Nabokov
Age: 77 †
Born: 1899
Born: January 1
Died: 1977
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Chess Composer
Chess Player
Journalist
Lepidopterist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
St. Petersburg
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Vladimir Sirin
Vl. Sirin
Wladimir Nabokoff-Sirin
V. Sirin
Rocks
Writer
Tree
Jobs
Character
Writing
Main
Throw

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.
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Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
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Solitude was corrupting me.
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Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be
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Style and Structure are the essence of a book great ideas are hogwash.
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I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
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Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
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Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.
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What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness -- that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidts the night of non-being.
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Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
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... my mind lay limp in an empty world.
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Look at this tangle of thorns.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
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Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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
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Words without experience are meaningless.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
Vladimir Nabokov
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And I want to rise up, throw my arms open for a vast embrace, address an ample, luminous discourse to the invisible crowds. I would start like this: O rainbow-colored gods. . .
Vladimir Nabokov
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Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.
Vladimir Nabokov