Quotes by Nicholson Baker

Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in?

— Nicholson Baker

Life

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.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for.

— Nicholson Baker

Success

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

Wisdom

For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.

— Nicholson Baker

Life

I was very shy and somewhat awkward. I studied too hard. And to have this exciting dorm life was a whole new thing.

— Nicholson Baker

Life

I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.

— Nicholson Baker

Love

First, if you love the Kindle and it works for you, it isn't problematic, and you should ignore all my criticisms and read the way you want to read.

— Nicholson Baker

Love

I've never been a fast reader. I'm fickle; I don't finish books I start; I put a book aside for five, ten years and then take it up again.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

E.B. White's essays are the best things I've read about Maine - especially the one in which he's not sure if he can go out sailing any more in his sloop.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

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.

— Nicholson Baker

Success

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.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

There's a time and place for the Kindle, and I own one now and have books on it that I don't otherwise have. But I don't find that my hand reaches out for it the way it does for a trade paperback, or (in the middle of the night) for the iPod Touch.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

Shoes are the first adult machines we are given to master.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

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.

— Nicholson Baker

Friendship

I keep thinking I'll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I've read about 20 Dick Francis novels.

— Nicholson Baker

Happiness

Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

You can register a political objection in a number of ways.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow.

— Nicholson Baker

Life

I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

I'm often called obsessive, but I don't think I am any more than anyone else.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

I've always thought of myself as shy.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom

Rarely do pens go dry in restaurants.

— Nicholson Baker

Wisdom