Nicholson Baker quotes

Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It is fact-encirclingly huge, and it is idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking and full of simmering controversies - and it is free, and it is fast. (Nicholson Baker)
Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in? View quote
Nicholson Baker
Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for. View quote
Nicholson Baker
I like shelves full of books in a library, but if all books become electronic, the task of big research libraries remains the same - keep what's published in the form in which it appeared. View quote
Nicholson Baker
Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who brought them out. They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades. That's one of their nicest qualities - their brute persistence. View quote
Nicholson Baker
I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read. View quote
Nicholson Baker
Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens. View quote
Nicholson Baker
But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It's a mistake of emphasis. View quote
Nicholson Baker
For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo. View quote
Nicholson Baker
The nice thing about a protest song is that it takes the complaint, the fussing, the finger-pointing, and gives it an added component of sociable harmony. View quote
Nicholson Baker
I keep thinking I'll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I've read about 20 Dick Francis novels. (Nicholson Baker)
You can register a political objection in a number of ways. View quote
Nicholson Baker
I really practiced hard and got to a certain level of technical proficiency. I overcame some of my limitations. I was a hard-working, dedicated bassoonist, but I have to say I'm not a natural musician. View quote
Nicholson Baker
Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism. View quote
Nicholson Baker
While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read. View quote
Nicholson Baker
I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow. View quote
Nicholson Baker
Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of. View quote
Nicholson Baker
It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price. View quote
Nicholson Baker
I ordered a Kindle 2 from Amazon. How could I not? There were banner ads for it all over the Web. Whenever I went to the Amazon Web site, I was urged to buy one. View quote
Nicholson Baker
I blush easily. I have difficulty meeting people's eye, difficulty with public speaking, the normal afflictions of the shy, but not to a paralysing degree. View quote
Nicholson Baker
I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes. (Nicholson Baker)
Rarely do pens go dry in restaurants. View quote
Nicholson Baker
Until a friend or relative has applied a particular proverb to your own life, or until you've watched him apply the proverb to his own life, it has no power to sway you. View quote
Nicholson Baker
Shoes are the first adult machines we are given to master. View quote
Nicholson Baker
When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry. View quote
Nicholson Baker