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Nicholson Baker Quotes

Nicholson Baker quotes

American Novelist January 7, 1957

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Quotes

So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain. Before they meant something specific, they had a shape and a way of being said. And now, yes, gloom and broom are floating fifty miles away from each other in you mind because they refer to different notions, but they're cheek-by-jowl as far as your tongue is concerned. And that's what a poem does. Poems match sounds up the way you matched them when you were a... Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker quote: "Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is..."
Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for. Nicholson Baker
And now I'm back outside again sitting in the white plastic chair looking at the dew on the gas cap of my car. A fly wants to bit me on the ankle. The mosquitoes are all asleep. They're just not out at this hour. Only one biting fly. And a mourning dove, who blows through his thumbs to make that sound. Nicholson Baker
And I'll flip through the newest issue, walking back from my blue mailbox, hunting for the poem he chose over mine, and it'll be the same thing as always. The prose will have pulled back, and the poem will be there, cavorting, saying, I'm a poem, I'm a poem. No, you're not! You're an impostor, you're a toy train of pretend stanzas of chopped garbage. Just like my poem was. Nicholson Baker
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
The two plants had a gentleman's agreement going, like the railroad companies and the real-estate speculators in the old days, whereby they progressed together up the hill and into the yard. Nicholson Baker
Notes of joy have a special STP solvent in them that dissolves all the gluey engine deposits of heartache. War and woe don't have anything like the range and reach that notes of joy do. Nicholson Baker
And then there is, of course, always, and inevitably, this spume of poetry that's just blowing out of the sulphurous flue-holes of the earth. Just masses of poetry. It's unstoppable, it's uncorkable. There's no way to make it end. Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker quote: "You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel..."
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
In 1855, as the price of paper rose, Dr. Deck proposed to dig up 2 1/2 million tons of Egyptian mummies, ship them to New York, unroll them; and use their linen wrappings to make paper. Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker quote: "Who cares about my cock? It'll fend for itself."
Who cares about my cock? It'll fend for itself. Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker quote: "A bee rose up from a sun-filled paper cup, off to make slum..."
A bee rose up from a sun-filled paper cup, off to make slum honey from some diet root beer it had found inside. Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker quote: "Poetry is prose in slow motion."
Poetry is prose in slow motion. Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker quote: "I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with..."
I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes. Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker quote: "Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in..."
Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in? Nicholson Baker

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