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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1a3b83f | statistical fiction, | Louis Menand | ||
| 0dc4402 | the true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief. | Louis Menand | ||
| 98ef8be | logarithms | Jack Du Brul | ||
| e1549ab | he kept a moldering portrait of himself in an attic to age for him. | Jack Du Brul | ||
| 8aa3a3b | XJS | Jack Du Brul | ||
| 9500974 | That is one of terrorism's hidden aims--to mentally scar those left in its wake so that they never feel safe again and always fear the light. | Jack Du Brul | ||
| b36a4ae | Will the time ever come when I am not so completely dependent on thoughts I first had in childhood to furnish the feedstock for my comparisons and analogies and sense of the parallel rhythms of microhistory? Will I reach the point where there will be a good chance, I mean a more than fifty-fifty chance, that any random idea popping back into the foreground of my consciousness will be an idea that first came to me as an adult, rather than on.. | childhood | Nicholson Baker | |
| e5dbbaf | Nicholson Baker, a man who knows the joys of obsessive research, has already started the division. "Let me tell you," he says, "I remember the old days, the antegoogluvian era. It was O.K.--it wasn't horrible by any means. There were cordless telephones, and people wore comfortable sweaters... . But the haul was haphazard, and it came in slow." | Jack Lynch | ||
| 6e797e3 | sometimes it's hard to tell the truth because the truth is hard to see, because it exists in a misty, gray non-space between two strongly charged falsehoods that sound true but aren't. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 6b278d3 | anthology knowledge isn't real knowledge. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 56f9216 | one above their individual homes about a quarter of an inch, and most would fall back in place; but some, the loosest, would loft higher and often land irregularly, leaving one graspable end sticking up--these you used for your drink. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 585f67f | The thing about life is that life is an infinite subject matter. At any one moment you can say only what' before your mind just then. You have some control over what comes before your mind - you can influence the influx by reading, or by looking through your old notes, or by going to movies, or by talking to people, and you can choose what room of the house or what corner of the yard to sit in, and you can choose to write before or after yo.. | writing | Nicholson Baker | |
| 18ee0cc | The address of the Tip O'Neill building is 10 Causeway Street. It may be torn down soon, because it is one of the most wonderfully unsightly buildings ever constructed. In the eighties they blew up a grand hotel that had gone seedy, and in its place they built this shrine to Congressman Tip O'Neill. It houses all the federal offices - the office of Social Security, and the Firearms Legitimization Bureau, the Bioshock Informant Management Co.. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| bad24de | Used with care, substances that harm neural tissue, such as alcohol, can aid intelligence: you corrode the chromium, giggly, crossword puzzle-solving parts of your mind with pain and poison, forcing the neurons to take responsibility for themselves and those around them, toughening themselves against the accelerated wear of these artificial solvents. After a night of poison. your brain wakes up in the morning saying, "No, I don't give a shi.. | the-brain trivia | Nicholson Baker | |
| d3ab3c4 | They knew that the outer surface of truth is not smooth, welling and gathering from paragraph to shapely paragraph, but is encrusted with a rough protective bark of citations, quotation marks, italics and foreign languages, a whole variorum crust of 'ibid.'s' and 'compare's' and 'see's' that are the shield for the pure flow of argument as it lives for a moment in one mind... | Nicholson Baker | ||
| f676e7b | Literary friendship is impossible, it seems; at least, it is impossible for me. Indeed, all male friendships outside of work sometimes seem to be impossible: you look at each other at the restaurant at some point in the conversation and you know that each of you is thinking, man, this is futile, why are we here, we're wasting our time, we have nothing to say, we're not involved in some project together that we can bitch about, we can't flir.. | masculinity writing | Nicholson Baker | |
| 35d6728 | Perforation! Shout it out! The deliberate punctuated weakening of paperand cardboard so that it will tear along an intended path, leaving a row of fine-haired white pills or tuftlets on each new edge! It is a staggering conception, showing an age-transforming feel for the unique properties of pulped-wood fiber. Yet do we have national holidays to celebrate its development? Are festschrift volumes published honoring the dead greats in the fi.. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 21a1768 | The meanness that first bothered me, though, when I encountered it a decade ago, long before I was married, was in a short story in in which a young husband returns with hamburgers and eats them happily with his family in front of the fire, and thinks lovingly of his wife's Joyceanly "smackwarm" thighs, and then, in the next paragraph, says as narrator (the "you" directed at the narrator's wife), "In the morning, to my relief, you are ugl.. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 44999d2 | Someone has said that experience is a tough teacher because it always gives the exam first and teaches the lesson afterward. If we turn our mistakes into mirrors, we'll see only ourselves, and this will make us miserable. But if by faith we turn our mistakes into windows, we'll see the Lord and get the strength we need to try again. | Warren W. Wiersbe | ||
| bd04508 | You float like a feather," sings Radiohead, "In a beautiful world." I've listened several times to the Radiohead songs, because it was nice of Raymond to say he heard a bit of them in what I sang. I'm not sure I hear it myself, but I am pleased and touched. Sometimes that's what you need, just a quick casual word of knowledgeable encouragement. Radiohead reminds me a little of the songs in Garden State soundtrack. Now, that's a soundtrack. .. | music songs-lyrics | Nicholson Baker | |
| 9299b90 | bavardage. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| e1b2889 | But now, after the news of Barthelme's death, this simple fact of or , which I had begun to recognize in a small way already, now became the single most important supplemental piece of information I felt I could know about a writer: more important than his age when he wrote a particular work, or his nationality, his sex (forgive the pronoun), political leanings, even whether he did or did not have, in someone's opinion, any talent. -- .. | writing | Nicholson Baker | |
| 90c5241 | The nice thing about putting on your glasses in the dark is that you know you could see better if it were light, but since it is dark the glasses make no difference at all. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 14a92df | The Bombay Chronicle asked Mohandas Gandhi what he thought of the fact that the United States was now in the war. It was December 20, 1941. 'I cannot welcome this entry of America,' Gandhi said. 'By her territorial vastness, amazing energy, unrivalled financial status and owing to the composite character of her people she is the one country which could have saved the world from the unthinkable butchery that is going on.' Now, he said, ther.. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 7ae6e58 | sometimes it's hard to tell the truth because you the truth is hard to see, because it exists in a misty, gray non-space between two strongly charged falsehoods that sound true but aren't. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| efa135a | Subject of Thought Number of Times Thought Occurred per Year (in descending order) L. 580.0 Family 400.0 Brushing tongue 150.0 Earplugs 100.0 Bill-paying 52.0 Panasonic three-wheeled vacuum cleaner, greatness of 45.0 Sunlight makes you cheerful 40.0 Traffic frustration 38.0 Penguin books, all 35.0 Job, should I quit? 34.0 Friends, don't have any 33.0 Marriage, a possibility? 32.0 Vending machines 31.0 Straws don't unsheath well 28.0 Shine o.. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 8ce7532 | At that age I once stabbed my best friend, Fred, with a pair of pinking shears in the base of the neck, enraged because he had been given the comprehensive sixty-four-crayon Crayola box--including the gold and silver crayons--and would not let me look closely at the box to see how Crayola had stabilized the built-in crayon sharpener under the tiers of crayons. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| aca05d1 | I am not proud of the fact that major ingredients of my emotional history are available for purchase today at CVS. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 44a347e | Reading is itself a state of artificially enhanced loneliness. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| d439a1e | Half the rate means half a loaf, but nix means nothing on the table. | At Swim, Two Boys | ||
| b4309c6 | There's a burden to rank that one day you'll understand. | At Swim, Two Boys | ||
| b25dc52 | But, truly, the worst trains take one across the best landscapes. | Paul Theroux | ||
| 93eccf6 | Your kind never failed at nothing yet, for you never stopped at nothing long enough to find out. | At Swim, Two Boys | ||
| b2bc3db | It is when we fail to trust Him or obey Him, when our love for Him grows cold, that life takes on a somber hue. If we walk in God's wisdom, we will enjoy His blessings. | Warren W. Wiersbe | ||
| 894ba2a | India is not a piece of land, but a living entity. | Atal Bihari Vajpayee | ||
| 0d65f83 | What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere if you're not in a hurry. | Paul Theroux | ||
| 4934a92 | When man's tradition replaces God's Word, then illusion replaces reality. We glory in the past but never grow in the present. | Warren W. Wiersbe | ||
| 06e478d | I said I was a stranger here. "Ain't no strangers here, baby," she said, and gave me a merry smile." | Paul Theroux | ||
| 2988dab | That seemed to be the theme in the Deep South: kindness, generosity, a welcome. | Paul Theroux | ||
| f4b4e13 | Death, one experiences alone Love is a two-person thing | Ataol Behramoğlu | ||
| ce659bd | The poet should be responsible to the poem. | Ataol Behramoğlu | ||
| ec01364 | On the sunny day that I spent walking its streets I was reminded that Philadelphia (Mississippi) is still the headquarters of the Mississippi Klan. I easily found the headquarters and the free leaflets. "...It's a Klansman's responsibility to register to vote, campaign, and vote for conservative pro white candidates who will put America first and defend our nation's borders." -- | Paul Theroux | ||
| 421065f | I walked for an hour and then returned by a different route to wait out the weekend. It was one of those empty interludes in travel, an airless unrewarding delay, when nothing occurs except a rising sense of loneliness and uncertainty, a darkening of prospects, the condition of being an outsider with all of a stranger's suspicions. | Paul Theroux | ||
| e463895 | Raging politeness," this extreme friendliness is sometimes termed, but even if that is true, it is better than the cold stare or the averted eyes or the calculated snub I was used to in New England." | Paul Theroux |