Nicholson Baker

I blush easily. I have difficulty meeting people's eye, difficulty with public speaking, the normal afflictions of the shy, but not to a paralysing degree.

You can register a political objection in a number of ways.

I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow.

The great thing about novels is that you can be as unshy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people.

I've always thought of myself as shy.

E.B. White's essays are the best things I've read about Maine - especially the one in which he's not sure if he can go out sailing any more in his sloop.

First, if you love the Kindle and it works for you, it isn't problematic, and you should ignore all my criticisms and read the way you want to read.

I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.

I was very shy and somewhat awkward. I studied too hard. And to have this exciting dorm life was a whole new thing.

Until a friend or relative has applied a particular proverb to your own life, or until you've watched him apply the proverb to his own life, it has no power to sway you.

For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.

Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in?