"I always think when I’m starting a new project, ‘I want to do everything in this book; I want it to..."

“I always think when I’m starting a new project, ‘I want to do everything in this book; I want it to cover every single thing.’ And it doesn’t ever turn out that way. It can’t happen. But that’s always the emotion I have pulling at me. I try to pour in every charged particle, and say all that must be said, and of course I can’t. Which means that the next book has to be about everything. So I give it another shot, and that one also falls short. Each book is in some way trying to correct the state of imbalance and incompletion left by its predecessors—chugging around the garden, watering new tomatoes.”

- Nicholson Baker (via mttbll)