Nicholson Baker Quotes

They've pursued their own agendas, and they've done what they've wanted to do and not pursued traditional careers in the music industry. They've followed their own instincts, and they are in many ways maverick performers.

I was basically a dork that hit the books and liked to build things and did all of the things that you weren't supposed to do to be popular. But somehow I ended up onstage, playing guitar in front of everybody else.

I was never a joiner. I tried - I had people I admired and liked and wanted to hang with, but I ended up starting a theatre company and that took me back to Chicago... I guess I wasn't a scenester in the end. Something must have worked out right, as I'm still here - but I'm only a binge socialite.

I found that I was much more interested in writing and that I didn't like the illustrating at all. I had always been the hardest on myself when I drew and painted. I am not hard on myself when I write. I like what I write, so it is a much happier process.

There's not that many people from the sixties who have progressed as writers and are continuing on. They're out there. But I'm one of them who's just continued on, following his own little inner madness.

I've always felt quite like an outsider. I don't really belong in the mainstream, and I quite like that.

I think I'm a difficult conventional writer.

Most entertainers start at a young age saying, 'I don't want to be normal. I don't want a regular job.'... I think that's something that's innate.

I think young writers ought to be heretical.

You never meet other screenwriters because it's such a lonely profession.

I've done things my own way every since I've entered public office.

I wrote 'Time Stops at Shamli' in 1956, shortly after 'The Room on the Roof' was published, and I couldn't find anyone to publish it.

I am not bothered with whether my characters are conventional or not. Because I am not in this for the designer labels and the autographs.

I'm sort of stuck in adolescence in many ways, like most artists, and march to my own beat.

I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published.

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

I have a hard time writing happy things. I really just don't find it that interesting for me personally to write about that.

I've never been a mainstream kind of guy.

I find it hard to write really cool texts in German. At some point I had the feeling that it didn't work for me any more. So I'd rather not write any German songs at all than write uncool ones.

There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.

I've been called a career hippie. I like that, I like that a lot.

Like pretty much every short story writer, I submitted to every market under the sun and hoped for the best. The rejection letters I've collected over the years can probably make a book of their own.

I existed before the mainstream. Why would I join them? I watched the mainstream come up, and now I'm watching it collapse. I don't want to be a part of that.

I paid a price for being on game shows and that was not being taken seriously. But so what? I did what I did and I was glad. But it's a strange form of immortality.

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.