Quotes from Nicholson Baker

I would like to visit the factory that makes train horns, and ask them how they are able to arrive at that chord of eternal mournfulness. Is it deliberately sad? Are the horns saying, Be careful, stay away from this train or it will run you over and then people will grieve, and their grief will be as the inconsolable wail of this horn through the night? The out-of-tuneness of the triad is part of its beauty.

There is no good word for stomach ; just as there is no good word for girlfriend . Stomach is to girlfriend as belly is to lover , and as abdomen is to consort , and as middle is to petite amie .

The whole point of straws, I had thought, was that you did not have to set down the slice of pizza to suck a dose of Coke while reading a paperback.

no animal likes to be pecked on the anus by a duck.

I made an egg salad sandwich and took a bite of it over the open silverware drawer. A piece of egg salad fell in among the forks. I swore softly with my mouth full. Another piece of egg salad fell in.

Notes of joy have a special STP solvent in them that dissolves all the gluey engine deposits of heartache. War and woe don't have anything like the range and reach that notes of joy do.

In 1855, as the price of paper rose, Dr. Deck proposed to dig up 2 1/2 million tons of Egyptian mummies, ship them to New York, unroll them; and use their linen wrappings to make paper.

Anyway, she sings like a mad tropical bird, and it's just a fondue of molten wanting and grieving and the sadness of the large naked swinging breasts and soft olive skin and everything that you wish you could remember and feel and know.

in repairing the object you really ended up loving it more, because you now knew its eagerness to be reassembled, and in running a fingertip over its surface you alone could feel its many cracks - a bond stronger than mere possession.