The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living? — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
In the novel, I can change things and simplify, and make events work towards whatever meanings I'm trying to get at more… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
I keep thinking I'll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I've read about 20 Dick Francis novels. — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
The great thing about novels is that you can be as unshy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person.… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
Most good novelists have been women or homosexuals. The novel is the triumphant evolved creation, one increasingly has to think, of these… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
I wanted my first novel to be a veritable infarct of narrative cloggers-the trick being to feel your way through each clog… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
Writing has to do with truth-telling. When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
The job of the novel is to be true to the confusion, but not so confusing that you turn the reader off. — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
I did not know that the planning for biological and chemical warfare was so widespread in England, and even in France before France fell.… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
Just as the people who lived through the Second World War thought different things on different days, I think everybody who goes through that… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
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… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
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… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“Why are things beautiful? I don´t know. That´s a good question. Isn´t it pleasing when you ask a question of a person, a teacher,… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
I'm suspicious of full-replacement programs - that is, pronouncements that one way of doing something will entirely supplant another, and that in fact we… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
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… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“The neurons that do expire are the ones that made imitation possible. When you are capable of skillful imitation, the sweep of choices before… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
What's somewhat puzzling is that Churchill himself knew what the reaction would be to any sort of aerial attack on cities, because in 1938… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
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… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
