A Quote by Nicholson Baker

Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in? — © Nicholson Baker
Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in?
You know the first time I sat in the chair I felt anything but up, it was very emotional for me. I had a chair in my hotel room, a chair at rehearsal, and I was trying to spend as much time as I could in the chair.
Going back to that idea that painting sits still and that we give ourselves over to it over time. There's a difference between living with - imagine if this were sitting in your living room for 15 years. You'd probably understand the contours of it.
Giving birth was the most amazing thing I've ever done. I'd been living in a Third World country, and I said, 'I'm going to just squat behind a tree.' I basically did that but in a chair in my living room. I didn't want a sterile hospital room. I didn't want doctors. I had a midwife.
I don't think of myself as anything more than a person who sits in the living room with you telling you a story. I just happen to be in 16 million living rooms.
Certainly a chair can be just as interesting as a human being. But first the chair must be perceived by a human being... You should not paint the chair, but only what someone has felt about it.
A film has a sort of life over time, whereas a TV show comes up in your living room, and it's immediate, and people write about it.
A film has a sort of life over time, whereas a TV show comes up in your living room, and its immediate, and people write about it.
If you build your own chair, there is a lot of things that happen. You could probably buy a nice chair for less money than a chair that you built yourself, and it might even look better, but if you build that chair, you're going to take care of it and maintain it because it's your chair. If it breaks, you know how to fix it.
Real success is finding your life work in the work that you love. That's it. Don't worry about making a living, don't worry about popularity or fame. Make what you do ... count more than what you own.
People win Oscars, and then it seems like they fall off the planet. And that's partly because a huge expectation walks in the room and sits right down on top of your head. The moment I won the Oscar, I felt the teardown the very next day.
Television: The device that brings into your living room characters you would never allow in your living room.
There's no question that in my lifetime, the contrast between what I called private affluence and public squalor has become very much greater. What do we worry about? We worry about our schools. We worry about our public recreational facilities. We worry about our law enforcement and our public housing. All of the things that bear upon our standard of living are in the public sector.
There must be another life, she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves.
I grew up on the side of the stage. I never had a fear of an audience. I never felt like they were separated from us. We were all in the living room, and it happens to be a big living room. I continue to operate on that assumption.
Stand-up comedians know how to walk into a room, even if you're not performing, just read the temperature of a room, and can easily sort of tell what's going on or what people are sort of feeling in the room, and it allows you to sort of approach people.
Everyone who sits on a sofa watching 'Match of the Day' is a top soccer expert, as you know. So if you start to worry about such people reading your story and saying, 'That'd never happen' you're going to freeze up. You're writing fiction, and your characters can do whatever you need them to do.
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