Top 39 Quotes by Nicholson Baker

Rarely do pens go dry in restaurants.

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

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

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.

While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read.

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.

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

The nice thing about a protest song is that it takes the complaint, the fussing, the finger-pointing, and gives it an added component of sociable harmony.

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

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.