Nicholson Baker Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Most good novelists have been women or homosexuals. The novel is the triumphant evolved creation, one increasingly has to think, of these two groups, who have cooperated more closely in this domain than in any other.

  Nicholson Baker

  Women, Thinking, Two

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.132, Vintage

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• Updike was the first to take the penile sensorium under the wing of elaborate metaphorical prose.

  Nicholson Baker

  Sex, Wings, Firsts

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.25, Vintage

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• When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they have entered an extreme region beyond their normal personality, an area of social crime where gradations don't count; unavailable to them are the instincts and taboos that booming extroverts, who know the territory of self-advancement far better, can rely on.

  Nicholson Baker

  Self, Personality, Rude

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.153, Vintage

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• I did not know that the planning for biological and chemical warfare was so widespread in England, and even in France before France fell. It was news to me that there had been talk, even in the First World War, of dropping Colorado beetles on German potato crops and that kind of thing.

  Nicholson Baker

  War, England, Colorado

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• You need the art in order to love the life.

  Nicholson Baker

  Art, Order, Needs

  Nicholson Baker (2009). “The Anthologist: A Novel”, p.183, Simon and Schuster

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• So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain. Before they meant something specific, they had a shape and a way of being said. And now, yes, gloom and broom are floating fifty miles away from each other in you mind because they refer to different notions, but they're cheek-by-jowl as far as your tongue is concerned. And that's what a poem does. Poems match sounds up the way you matched them when you were a tiny kid, using that detachable front phoneme.

  Nicholson Baker

  Kids, Curves, Brain

  Nicholson Baker (2009). “The Anthologist: A Novel”, p.111, Simon and Schuster

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• Perforation! Shout it out! The deliberate punctuated weakening of paper and cardboard so that it will tear along an intended path, leaving a row of fine-haired pills or tuftlets on each new edge! It is a staggering conception, showing an age-transforming feel for the unique properties of pulped wood fiber.

  Nicholson Baker

  Unique, Leaving, Tears

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• In fact, you could make the argument that a historian like Shlomo Aronson does in passing in one of his books, that the bombing campaign united the German nation behind Hitler, and actually contributed to the sustaining of his power.

  Nicholson Baker

  Book, Doe, Campaigns

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• 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.

  Nicholson Baker

  Order, Names, Events

  "A life in writing". Interview with Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. September 18, 2009.

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

  Nicholson Baker

  Thinking, Suspense Novels, Sometimes

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• 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.

  Nicholson Baker

  Thinking, Should, Force

  Nicholson Baker (2012). “The Way the World Works”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• I am closer to the pacifist side, in that I think that the British response to German aggression, which was to try to starve the Continent into a state of revolt and to terrorize German civilians with bombing raids, was part of the total catastrophe.

  Nicholson Baker

  Thinking, Trying, Sides

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• I think I am done with Wikipedia for the time being. But I have a secret hope. Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue - a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libelous or otherwise illegal.

  Nicholson Baker

  Dream, Thinking, Long

  Nicholson Baker (2012). “The Way the World Works: Essays”, p.205, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  Criticism, Want, Way

  "Ask The Author Live: Nicholson Baker On The Kindle". Q&As, www.newyorker.com. July 24, 2009.

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

  Nicholson Baker

  Want, Apartment

  Nicholson Baker (1996). “The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber”, Vintage

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• Just as the people who lived through the Second World War thought different things on different days, I think everybody who goes through that period carefully now thinks different things on different days.

  Nicholson Baker

  War, Thinking, People

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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

  Nicholson Baker

  Novelists, Groups, World

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.16, Vintage

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• 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

  Book, Years, Fickle

  Nicholson Baker (2012). “The Way the World Works”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.

  Nicholson Baker

  Sympathy, Voice, Rooms

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.65, Vintage

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• I certainly felt I had an idea of World War II, and it's probably the idea that many people share: there was this insane aggressor, and there was really only one way to proceed in resisting him. What I didn't realize is that there were many voices belonging to reasonable, interesting, complicated people who had a different way of interpreting the possible responses to the Hitlerian menace.

  Nicholson Baker

  War, Ideas, Voice

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• 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.

  Nicholson Baker

  Writing, Would Be, Pseudonyms

  "Nicholson Baker: 'Writing this book was the most fun I ever had'" by Peter Conrad, www.theguardian.com. August 13, 2011.

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• Sometimes I think with the telephone that if I concentrate enough I could pour myself into it and I'd be turned into a mist and I would rematerialize in the room of the person I'm talking to. Is that too odd for you?

  Nicholson Baker

  Thinking, Talking, Rooms

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

  Nicholson Baker

  Numbers, Political, Way

  "Four Protest Songs". www.newyorker.com. October 8, 2012.

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• 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

  White, Sailing, Maine

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

  Nicholson Baker

  Thinking, Obsessive

  "A life in writing" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. September 18, 2009.

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