History isn't a seesaw. If you have a really bad regime on one side, the actions on the other side don't automatically become good. It doesn't work that way. Nicholson Baker More Quotes by Nicholson Baker More Quotes From Nicholson Baker I prefer reading e-books on a high resolution LCD screen - like the iPod Touch's - although the pixel density could and should be much higher. Nicholson Baker ipods reading book I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow. Nicholson Baker wells flow world I'm often called obsessive, but I don't think I am any more than anyone else. Nicholson Baker obsessive thinking 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 fickle book years People don't like to read text on computer screens (and reading a lot of text on iPod screens gets very tiring very soon, just about as soon as running out of battery power). Nicholson Baker ipods reading running Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays. Nicholson Baker essays poet writing When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry. Nicholson Baker bother want people 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 pseudonyms would-be writing I wrote about World War II because I didn't understand it. I think that's the reason that historians are drawn to any subject - there's something about it that doesn't make sense. I wanted to work my way through what happened slowly, and look at everything in the order in which it took place. Nicholson Baker war order thinking Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism. Nicholson Baker altruism wikipedia shrines You can register a political objection in a number of ways. Nicholson Baker political numbers way 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 maine sailing white 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. Nicholson Baker signatures training sound 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 degrees eye people 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 wikipedia incredibles facts I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes. Nicholson Baker apartment want Each decision - to kill, to sign a petition, to write a letter, to make a speech, to attack, to lie, to surrender - was made at some point in somebody's day. Nicholson Baker decision writing lying I wanted to apprentice myself to the dailiness of the war's beginning phase. It's truer and more frightening that way - when you're afloat on a little dingy in the midst of it all. Nicholson Baker phases littles war I certainly felt I had an idea of World War II, and it's probably the idea that many people share: there was this insane aggressor, and there was really only one way to proceed in resisting him. What I didn't realize is that there were many voices belonging to reasonable, interesting, complicated people who had a different way of interpreting the possible responses to the Hitlerian menace. Nicholson Baker voice war ideas Just as the people who lived through the Second World War thought different things on different days, I think everybody who goes through that period carefully now thinks different things on different days. Nicholson Baker war people thinking
