Nicholson Baker Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism.

  Nicholson Baker

  Wikipedia, Shrines, Altruism

  Nicholson Baker (2012). “The Way the World Works”, p.191, Simon and Schuster

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• I wanted my first novel to be a veritable infarct of narrative cloggers-the trick being to feel your way through each clog by blowing it up until its obstructiveness finally reveals not blank mass but unlooked-for seepage points of passage.

  Nicholson Baker

  Narrative, Way, Firsts

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.77, Vintage

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• There is no good word for stomach; just as there is no good word for girlfriend. Stomach is to girlfriend as belly is to lover, and as abdomen is to consort, and as middle is to petite amie.

  Nicholson Baker

  Girlfriend, Abdomen, Lovers

  Nicholson Baker (1990). “The Mezzanine: A Novel”, Vintage

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• I prefer reading e-books on a high resolution LCD screen - like the iPod Touch's - although the pixel density could and should be much higher.

  Nicholson Baker

  Book, Reading, Ipods

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

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• True, the name of the product wasn't so great. Kindle? It was cute and sinister at the same time - worse than Edsel, or Probe, or Microsoft's Bob. But one forgives a bad name. One even comes to be fond of a bad name, if the product itself is delightful.

  Nicholson Baker

  Cute, Names, Forgiving

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

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• Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings about how the characters should act. When the scriptwriters go slightly wrong, when they make the character make a left turn that he or she wouldn't do, you know enough about the characters to say, "No, that's not what she would do there. That's wrong." You can actually argue with a TV show in a way that you can't do as much with movie - you inhabit a TV show in the way you inhabit a novel.

  Nicholson Baker

  Character, Tv Shows, Feelings

  "Nicholson Baker Navigates The Buffet". Interview with Jared Levy, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 16, 2013.

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

  Nicholson Baker

  World, Flow, Wells

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• Gandhi was important for another reason as well: his country was suffering under the British Empire, and yet he was leading a very singular kind of resistance to it. At the time he was speaking about the violence in Europe, his followers were in jail as prisoners of the British government.

  Nicholson Baker

  Country, Government, Europe

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

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• As soon as you start doing that - changing things - it seems self-evident to me that you've entered the world of make-believe. If you pretend that it's true, and use your own name, you are misleading people. Fiction is looser and wilder and sometimes in the end more self-revealing, anyway.

  Nicholson Baker

  Believe, Names, Self

  "Nicholson Baker Navigates The Buffet". Interview with Jared Levy, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 16, 2013.

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• Sometimes I'll spend an hour writing a tiny email. I work on it until I've created the illusion that I've dashed it off in three minutes. If I make a typo, I let it stand. Sometimes in fact I correct the typo without thinking, and then I back up and retype the typo so that it'll look more casual. I don't know why.

  Nicholson Baker

  Writing, Thinking, Email

  Nicholson Baker (2009). “The Anthologist: A Novel”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

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• A bee rose up from a sun-filled paper cup, off to make slum honey from some diet root beer it had found inside.

  Nicholson Baker

  Beer, Roots, Rose

  Nicholson Baker (2010). “Mezzanine”, p.81, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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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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• The great thing about novels is that you can be as unshy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people.

  Nicholson Baker

  People, Upset, Want

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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 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 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

  Eye, People, Degrees

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• One's head is finite. You pour more and more things into it - surnames, chronologies, affiliations - and it packs them away in its tunnels, and eventually you find that you have a book about something that you publish.

  Nicholson Baker

  Book, Tunnels, Affiliation

  Nicholson Baker (2012). “The Way the World Works”, p.314, Simon and Schuster

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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'm a sucker for interiors and carefully, beautifully filmed people sitting in a big room. My appetites are simple.

  Nicholson Baker

  Simple, People, Sitting

  "Nicholson Baker Navigates The Buffet". Interview with Jared Levy, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 16, 2013.

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• 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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• 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

  Song, Writing, College

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

  52 Copy quote

• 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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• From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound.

  Nicholson Baker

  Training, Signatures, Sound

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

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• 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

  Particular, Relative

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

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