Adam Gopnik Quotes, Thinking Quotes, Ideas Quotes

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

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Ideas Quotes

If you're being attacked from all sides, it's possible you're doing something right; it's also possible that you are doing everything wrong.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Sides 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

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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Secret Quotes , Quality 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , People 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Heart Quotes , Hands Quotes

Dinner with water is dinner for prisoners

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Water Quotes , Dinner Quotes

American long for a closed society in which everything can be bought, where laborers are either hidden away or dressed up as nonhumans, so as not to be disconcerting. This place is called Disney World

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Long Quotes , World 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Past Quotes

Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they’re arguing.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Winning Quotes

Writing is the process of finding something to distract you from writing, and of all the helpful distractions - adultery, alcohol and acedia, all of which aided our writing fathers - none can equal the Internet.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Father Quotes , Writing Quotes

The sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near-physical necessity: I must have it. The grace of capitalism is to make wants feel like hopes, so that material objects and stuff can feel like the possibility of something heroic and civic.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Silly Quotes , Simple Quotes

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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Drawing Quotes , Shapes Quotes

New York has always been a place where it is possible to have memories without the experience that conventionally precede them.

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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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Song 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Attitude Quotes , Party Quotes

Writing well isn't just a question of winsome expression, but of having found something big and true to say and having found the right words to say it in, of having seen something large and having found the right words to say it small, small enough to enter an individual mind so that the strong ideas of what the words are saying sound like sweet reason.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Sweet Quotes , Strong 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Crazy Quotes , Men 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