Nicholson Baker Quotes

When you talk about a reader being emotionally moved, a feeling of empathy, I think that comes out of that line-by-line respect for reader. That's actually where it all comes from.

One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.

It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

The Catcher in the Rye had such a deep impact on me, because it felt like it was just Holden and me. I didn't feel like any other person had read that book. It felt like my secret. Writing that I identify with feels like it's just me and the writer. So I hope that whoever is reading what I do feels like that.

A reader is entitled to believe what he or she believes is consonant with the facts of the book. It is not unusual that readers take away something that is spiritually at variance from what I myself experienced. That's not to say readers make up the book they want. We all have to agree on the facts. But readers bring their histories and all sets of longings. A book will pluck the strings of those longings differently among different readers.

The difference between a good song and a great song is a good song is one that you know, you'll put on in your car or you'll dance to it. But I think a great song you'll cry to it, or you get chills. I think a great song says how you feel better than you could.

I really think one of the greatest allies you can have is the imagination of your audience.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

My work is immaterial. It's not painting, it's not sculpture, it's emotions. I'm giving you something to experience yourself.

I'm often moved by the circumstances around some of my characters, but I don't think I've actually cried watching myself.

Did last night really happen?" One side of his lips tipped up, and my chest swelled. I'd missed that smile. "Depends on what you think happend." "I took my shirt off for you?" His eyes deepened. "Yes. Lovely moment.

There is a little bit of a head vs. heart kind of battle that happens sometimes with the song. There's the goose bump thing, where the melody or whatever it is just gets you and you don't know why. Sometimes, it's in a genre that you didn't think you liked and, all of a sudden, the song hits you and you just say, wow, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck. I love this song.

When you have a good movie, it's hard to categorize it. It's everything. It makes you laugh, makes you cry and makes you think.

A good song to one person could just be something mediocre to somebody else. It's always strange thinking about how songs connect with people.

Folks can look at this issue and read it and it can feel like medicine, it can feel epidemic. We wanted this to hit people in their gut, and the hope is that by doing that, we can get more people to think more deeply about these issues.

I really think people are greatly stimulated and enriched by experiencing in film just as we can from novels and other art, experiencing things that resonate with what our lives are about. I think people really want to know... want to share, want to have the stimulus to think and care about the way they live their lives, the way they relate to other people, their aspirations, their hopes, et cetera.

I like poems that affect me emotionally and also provoke me to further, deeper thought. I enjoy challenge, but not, I think, for its own sake.

the art of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its most intense pleasures and pains must remains private, and cannot be communicated to others.

The poet should try to give his poem the quiet swiftness of flame, so that the reader will feel and not think while he is reading. But the thinking will come afterwards.

What I see of the US Presidential elections from down here makes me want to disengage from that particular reality and just hole up and read. It's true. I think if I were living in the US, I would just turn my television and radio off for a year right now, and just read.

Usually the intention of the artistic effect is too sophisticated for most people to understand, sort of like a joke that they don't get so they don't think it's funny.

Chirag: Rowley, do you think I exist? Rowley: Nope! I can't even hear you or see you!

Acting has to reach everybody on some level - it's a communication of feeling - but as far as judging the work is concerned, it is, I think, something that actors know about.

I'm trying to get more into other things, where reality is nothing but each individual's way of thinking.