For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo. — 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 don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow. — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly… — 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… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of… — 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
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
One's head is finite. You pour more and more things into it - surnames, chronologies, affiliations - and it packs them away… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens. — 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
There's something paralyzing about being a writer that you have to escape. I don't want to think of myself as a guy… — 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
There's a time and place for the Kindle, and I own one now and have books on it that I don't otherwise… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“It's time for bed. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get in bed, and I don't have anyone… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
“The whole point of straws, I had thought, was that you did not have to set down the slice of pizza to… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
If you write every day, you're going to write a lot of things that aren't terribly good, but you're going to have… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
Most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers. That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
I like shelves full of books in a library, but if all books become electronic, the task of big research libraries remains… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
That was the problem with reading: you always had to pick up again at the very thing that had made you stop… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
First, if you love the Kindle and it works for you, it isn't problematic, and you should ignore all my criticisms and… — Nicholson Baker Copy Share Image
I prefer reading e-books on a high resolution LCD screen - like the iPod Touch's - although the pixel density could and… — 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
