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" Rarely do pens go dry in restaurants. "
Nicholson Baker
Dry
Restaurants
Rarely
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" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Nice
Song
Protest
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Say
Natural
Limitations
" I like shelves full of books in a library, but if all books become electronic, the task of big research libraries remains the same - keep what's published in the form in which it appeared. "
Nicholson Baker
Task
Library
Become
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Way
Own
Find
" I ordered a Kindle 2 from Amazon. How could I not? There were banner ads for it all over the Web. Whenever I went to the Amazon Web site, I was urged to buy one. "
Nicholson Baker
Amazon
Web
Buy
" It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price. "
Nicholson Baker
Name
Change
Feel
" When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry. "
Nicholson Baker
Why
People
Poetry
" I'm often called obsessive, but I don't think I am any more than anyone else. "
Nicholson Baker
I Am
Am
Think
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
More
Maine
White
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Writing
College
Dance
" I was very shy and somewhat awkward. I studied too hard. And to have this exciting dorm life was a whole new thing. "
Nicholson Baker
Life
Shy
Exciting
" Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays. "
Nicholson Baker
Who
Really
Many
" For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo. "
Nicholson Baker
Control
World
Me
" That was the problem with reading: you always had to pick up again at the very thing that had made you stop reading the day before. "
Nicholson Baker
You
Stop
Reading
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Start
Fast
Finish
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Wrote
Wanted
Published
" Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism. "
Nicholson Baker
Wikipedia
Altruism
Because
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Ignore
You
First
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Him
You
Power
" I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes. "
Nicholson Baker
Apartment
Want
Longer
" I've always thought of myself as shy. "
Nicholson Baker
Shy
Thought
Always
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Poetry
First
Poet
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Blush
Eye
Meeting
" True, the name of the product wasn't so great. Kindle? It was cute and sinister at the same time - worse than Edsel, or Probe, or Microsoft's Bob. But one forgives a bad name. One even comes to be fond of a bad name, if the product itself is delightful. "
Nicholson Baker
Bad
Time
True
" I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow. "
Nicholson Baker
Well
Outside
Happier
" Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of. "
Nicholson Baker
You
Whatever
Think
" 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 want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people. "
Nicholson Baker
Great
You
Talk
" Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for. "
Nicholson Baker
Working
You
Will
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Nothing
Books
Sit
" 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. "
Nicholson Baker
Messy
Fast
Free