Nicholson Baker

I did not know that the planning for biological and chemical warfare was so widespread in England, and even in France before…

— Nicholson Baker

Just as the people who lived through the Second World War thought different things on different days, I think everybody who goes…

— Nicholson Baker

I’ve always thought of myself as shy,

— Nicholson Baker

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

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

“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,…

— Nicholson Baker

I'm suspicious of full-replacement programs - that is, pronouncements that one way of doing something will entirely supplant another, and that in…

— Nicholson Baker

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

“The neurons that do expire are the ones that made imitation possible. When you are capable of skillful imitation, the sweep of…

— Nicholson Baker

What's somewhat puzzling is that Churchill himself knew what the reaction would be to any sort of aerial attack on cities, because…

— Nicholson Baker

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

— Nicholson Baker

As soon as you start doing that - changing things - it seems self-evident to me that you've entered the world of…

— Nicholson Baker

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

— Nicholson Baker

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…

— Nicholson Baker

“The fact that we had independently decided to sweep our apartments on that Sunday afternoon after spending the weekend together, I took…

— Nicholson Baker

I think I am done with Wikipedia for the time being. But I have a secret hope. Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue…

— Nicholson Baker

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

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

— Nicholson Baker

I blush easily. I have difficulty meeting people's eye, difficulty with public speaking, the normal afflictions of the shy, but not to…

— Nicholson Baker

When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they have entered…

— Nicholson Baker

“You’ve got to get cold to get warm,” Phoebe said. Now that is the truth. That is so true about so many…

— Nicholson Baker

Sometimes, despite the fact that you're reading through masses of material, you just can't not think about a certain event, for it…

— Nicholson Baker

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

— Nicholson Baker

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

Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of…

— Nicholson Baker