Adam Gopnik Quotes, Stars Quotes, Rocks Quotes

I rush to add that I find the Web infinitely useful for rustling up information, settling arguments or locating the legends of rock stars.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Stars Quotes , Rocks Quotes

I still think the best classic meal in New York is a coffee-shop breakfast - you sort of can't skip it.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , New York Quotes , Coffee Quotes

The relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios - the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about - was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. [...] That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Fear Quotes , Real Quotes

The future will be like the past, in the sense that, no matter how amazing or technologically advanced a society becomes, the basic human rhythm of petty malevolence, sordid moneygrubbing, and official violence, illuminated by occasional bursts of loyalty or desire or tenderness, will go on.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Past Quotes

Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Wall Quotes , Block Quotes

Big writers become a kind of shared climate.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Climate Quotes

Men choose Hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch. Women choose Alice [in Wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think they are disinherited monarchs.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Crazy Quotes , Men Quotes

Art without accomplishment becomes a form of faith, sustained more by the intensity of its common practice than by the pleasure it gives to its adherents in private.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Faith Quotes , Art Quotes

Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Magic Quotes , Mind Quotes

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Brutality Quotes , Scandal Quotes

When handsome men or beautiful women take up the work of the intellect, it impresses us because we know they could have chosen other paths to being impressive; that they chose the path of the mind suggests that there is on it something more worthwhile than a circuitous route to the good things that the good-looking get just by showing up.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Men Quotes

I try to turn a written thing, when I'm in trouble with it, into a spoken thing: I start imagining what I would say to someone if I were trying to tell the story or make the argument.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Trying Quotes , Stories Quotes

I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say. Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them. I think if journalists start doing that then they won't be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won't be practicing satire.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , People Quotes

Someone once said that the joy is not in writing but in having written. I can't say I find that to be true, though I understand the sentiment.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Joy Quotes

In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Eerie Quotes , Space Quotes

Lose your schematic conventions by finding some surprising symbol or shape in the welter of shades, and draw that.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Drawing Quotes , Shapes Quotes

Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers, I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Wine Quotes , Mean Quotes

All tastes have the quality of being in some way artificial and invented. The secret of life is to have enough detachment from your tastes and your values to see that they are a little bit absurd.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Secret Quotes , Quality Quotes

I think that we're always drawn - particularly sophisticated people - are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Ideas Quotes

Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Cooking Quotes , Sides Quotes