Nicholson Baker Quotes

• I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

  Nicholson Baker

  Healing, Thinking, World

  Nicholson Baker (2014). “The Paul Chowder Chronicles: The Anthologist and Traveling Sprinkler, Two Novels”, p.50, Penguin

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• Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

  Nicholson Baker

  Book, Needs, Matter

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• 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

  Book, Persistence, Quality

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

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• A problem that I have with everything fictional is that writers are always having to come up with sudden artillery explosions in the middle of whatever is going on. The characters are having interesting, subtle interactions, or jealousies, or whatever it is, and suddenly some gigantic angry eruption has to happen, a giant gasp where everyone has to scramble around. That's the point where I'm turned off. I want the dynamic range to be a little smaller. I don't like the big false bangs.

  Nicholson Baker

  Character, Interesting, Want

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

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• I would like to visit the factory that makes train horns, and ask them how they are able to arrive at that chord of eternal mournfulness. Is it deliberately sad? Are the horns saying, Be careful, stay away from this train or it will run you over and then people will grieve, and their grief will be as the inconsolable wail of this horn through the night? The out-of-tuneness of the triad is part of its beauty.

  Nicholson Baker

  Running, Grief, Grieving

  Nicholson Baker (2007). “Vintage Baker”, p.181, Vintage

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• Most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers. That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came together, and they won't coalesce ever again.

  Nicholson Baker

  Together, Letters, Worried

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

  Nicholson Baker

  Worry, Peculiar, Rooms

  Nicholson Baker (2007). “Vintage Baker”, p.86, Vintage

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• Some after-the-fact storytelling is inevitable, and, in fact, very good and useful. But then we want always to be able to enrich the stories, or maybe change the stories with a fresh infusion of specificity.

  Nicholson Baker

  Stories, Want, Able

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

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• The job of the novel is to be true to the confusion, but not so confusing that you turn the reader off.

  Nicholson Baker

  Jobs, Confusion, Confusing

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

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• Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

  Nicholson Baker

  Book, Reading, Reality

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• Poetry is prose in slow motion.

  Nicholson Baker

  Slow Motion, Poetry Is, Prose

  Nicholson Baker (2009). “The Anthologist: A Novel”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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• Of course, individuals are responsible for individual actions - the pilots who flew over Pearl Harbor and dropped bombs on those ships did a terrible thing as part of an attack on a military base.

  Nicholson Baker

  Military, Bombs, Pearls

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

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

  Nicholson Baker

  Shoes, Adults, Machines

  Nicholson Baker (2010). “Mezzanine”, p.13, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• There's something paralyzing about being a writer that you have to escape. I don't want to think of myself as a guy who's written a bunch of books. The 26 letters distance us from our own hesitations and they make us sound as if we know what we're doing. We know grammar, we know prose, but actually we're all just struggling in the dark, really.

  Nicholson Baker

  Distance, Struggle, Book

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

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• The function of a great library is to store obscure books.

  Nicholson Baker

  Book, Library, Obscure

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• Each decision - to kill, to sign a petition, to write a letter, to make a speech, to attack, to lie, to surrender - was made at some point in somebody's day.

  Nicholson Baker

  Lying, Writing, Decision

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

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• 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.

  Nicholson Baker

  Mistake, Thinking, Credit

  Nicholson Baker (2009). “The Anthologist: A Novel”, p.124, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  Wikipedia, Facts, Incredibles

  Nicholson Baker (2012). “The Way the World Works”, p.188, Simon and Schuster

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• When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry.

  Nicholson Baker

  People, Want, Bother

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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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• History isn't a seesaw. If you have a really bad regime on one side, the actions on the other side don't automatically become good. It doesn't work that way.

  Nicholson Baker

  Way, Sides, Action

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

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• You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.

  Nicholson Baker

  Swimming, White, Space

  Nicholson Baker (2014). “The Paul Chowder Chronicles: The Anthologist and Traveling Sprinkler, Two Novels”, p.22, Penguin

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• Los amigos, tanto los imaginarios que te construyes a partir de frases tomadas de un escritor vivo, como los reales de la universidad, y los parientes, a pesar de todo el derroche de ceremonias y farsas y de que de una hora de conversación puedes tener sólo cinco minutos en los que reaparece la vieja entente, son el único medio real para que entren en tu cerebro ideas ajenas.

  Nicholson Baker

  Friends, Real, Taken

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.64, Vintage

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• 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.

  Nicholson Baker

  Song, Nice, Giving

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

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• 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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