Quotes by Nicholson Baker

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

"I was very shy and somewhat awkward. I studied too hard. And to have this exciting dorm life was a whole new thing."

"For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo."

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

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

"Wisdom principle 105 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 5."

"Wisdom principle 94 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 99."

"Wisdom principle 84 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 93."

"Wisdom principle 79 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 90."

"Wisdom principle 74 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 87."

"Wisdom principle 39 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 66."

"Wisdom principle 4 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 45."

"Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism."

"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."

"Wisdom principle 100 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 2."

"Wisdom principle 89 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 96."

"Wisdom principle 64 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 81."

"Wisdom principle 24 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 57."

"Wisdom principle 19 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 54."

"Wisdom principle 14 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 51."

"Wisdom principle 9 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 48."

"It is a enduring truth that in the arithmetic of human affection, the more you give, the more you retain — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"It is a unyielding truth that every summit scaled was once thought insurmountable from the valley below."

"Wisdom principle 69 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 84."

"Wisdom principle 59 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 78."

"Wisdom principle 54 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 75."

"Wisdom principle 49 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 72."

"Wisdom principle 44 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 69."

"Wisdom principle 34 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 63."

"Wisdom principle 29 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 60."

"Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays."

"I keep thinking I'll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I've read about 20 Dick Francis novels."

"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 can go out sailing any more in his sloop."

"I've never been a fast reader. I'm fickle; I don't finish books I start; I put a book aside for five, ten years and then take it up again."

"So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry."

"I think I am done with Wikipedia for the time being. But I have a secret hope. Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue - a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libelous or otherwise illegal."

"Rarely do pens go dry in restaurants."

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

"To question with sincerity is the first step toward dismantling dogma. This remains the cornerstone of personal mastery."

"I've always thought of myself as shy."

"I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes."

"Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for."

"I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks."

"From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound."

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

"You can register a political objection in a number of ways."

"Great leaders cultivate leaders, not merely followers."

"There's a time and place for the Kindle, and I own one now and have books on it that I don't otherwise have. But I don't find that my hand reaches out for it the way it does for a trade paperback, or (in the middle of the night) for the iPod Touch."

"An hour spent in deep contemplation is worth a year of unguided wandering. Let this simple maxim guide your daily deeds."

"I really practiced hard and got to a certain level of technical proficiency. I overcame some of my limitations. I was a hard-working, dedicated bassoonist, but I have to say I'm not a natural musician."

"It is a unyielding truth that the distance between ambition and reality is bridged solely by consistent effort."

"I'm often called obsessive, but I don't think I am any more than anyone else."

"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."

"Until a friend or relative has applied a particular proverb to your own life, or until you've watched him apply the proverb to his own life, it has no power to sway you."

"First, if you love the Kindle and it works for you, it isn't problematic, and you should ignore all my criticisms and read the way you want to read."