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
When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry. – Nicholson Baker
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
Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library. – Nicholson Baker
The flowery Path of Poetry but ill accords with the thorny Mazes of the Law; in the one I have wandered with rapture from Infancy, and I have endeavoured to grace the other with a simple but lasting Ornament—Integrity of Heart. – Charles Snart, “Dedication, to Robert Lowe, Esq. Oxton,” 1807 January 1st, Newar