When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry. — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“And then there is, of course, always, and inevitably, this spume of poetry that's just blowing out of the sulphurous flue-holes of… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
When I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry. — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“And I'll flip through the newest issue, walking back from my blue mailbox, hunting for the poem he chose over mine, and… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“There's something narcissistic in the phrase "collected poems." Who's collecting them? The poem. How hard is that? That's not a real collection.… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly —… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“And then a man of forty or so, with a French accent, asked, "How do you achieve the presence of mind to… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“At some point you have to set aside snobbery and what you think is culture and recognize that any random episode of… — 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
