Adam Gopnik Quotes, Player Quotes, Drawing Quotes

Drawing is one of those things which sit on the uneasy bending line between instinct and instruction, where seeming perversity eventually trumps pleasure as the card players and the kibitzers interact and new thrills are sought.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Player Quotes , Drawing Quotes

The World Series is played in my doubtless too-nostalgic imagination in some kind of autumn afternoon light, and seeing it exclusively in the bitter chill of midnight breaks the spell of even the best of games.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Autumn Quotes , Light Quotes

Wit and puns aren't just décor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Mind Quotes , Essentials Quotes

Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don't exist...

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Book Quotes , Kids Quotes

Paris, on the other hand, looked exactly as it was supposed to look. It wore its heart on its sleeve, and the strange thing was that the heart it wore so openly was in other ways so closed-mysterious, uninviting.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Heart Quotes , Hands Quotes

The coffee shop is a great New York institution, but it has terrible coffee. And the more traditional coffee shops are trying to catch up with more sophisticated coffee drinkers.

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

If we are willing to act violently in pursuit of a peripheral interest, everyone can be certain that, when a vital interest is at stake, we will be still more violent. 'Credibility' is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we'll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , People Quotes , World 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Stars Quotes , Rocks Quotes

I think I'm more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Thinking Quotes

Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Song Quotes

Whatever sense of professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility: it's really our relief at no longer having to do things we were never good at doing in the first place - relief at never again having to dissect a frog or memorize the periodic table.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Accomplishment Quotes , Adults Quotes

There are as many attitudes to cooking as there are people cooking, of course, but I do think that cooking guys tend - I am a guilty party here - to take, or get, undue credit for domestic virtue, when in truth cooking is the most painless and, in its ways, ostentatious of the domestic chores.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Attitude Quotes , Party Quotes

We've had mass shootings in the United States in the part of violent antiabortion protesters, in the part of violent pro-ISIS militants. The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I don't think the trap and the horror is fanaticism.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Mass Shootings Quotes

In bookstores, my stuff is usually filed in the out-of-the-way, additional interest sections.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Bookstores Quotes , Stuff 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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Joy Quotes

Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Education Quotes , Art Quotes

Fanaticism comes in as many flavors as there are human beings.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Flavor Quotes , Humans Quotes

Yet in truth the big question Camus asked was never the Anglo-American liberal one: How can we make the world a little bit better tomorrow? It was the grander French one: Why not kill yourself tonight? That the answers come to much the same thing in the end-easy does it; tomorrow may be a bit better than today; and, after all, you have to have a little faith in people-doesn't diminish the glamour that clings to the man who turned the question over and look at it, elegantly, upside down.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Men Quotes , People Quotes

Sometimes having a good time can be the outward evidence of a deep re-thinking.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Good Times Quotes

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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Ideas Quotes