Adam Gopnik Quotes, Wall Quotes, Block 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

In an age of malice and bad faith on many sides, I reread White or Thurber or Mitchell and am reminded again that good writing is done, as I said in my elegy for Salinger, with an active eye and ear and an ardent heart, and in no other way.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Heart Quotes

Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share. You learn to sing with, not argue at, your possible readers.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Giving 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

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Mind Quotes , Essentials 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

Message Copied

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

Protein was the most valued ingredient 250 years ago: It was the rarest thing. Now the rarest thing we have is time: time to cook and time to eat.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Years Quotes , Ingredients Quotes

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Travel Quotes , Swim Quotes

After all, spinning is its own reward. There wouldn't be carousels if it weren't so.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Rewards Quotes , Spinning 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

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

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Long Quotes , World Quotes

I don't think there's any question journalists have become targets, but then I think that - that anyone who tries to practice liberty becomes a target of fanatics.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Practice 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 bookstores, my stuff is usually filed in the out-of-the-way, additional interest sections.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Bookstores Quotes , Stuff 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

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Winning Quotes

Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution - perhaps the first modern political institution.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Hangover Quotes , Believe Quotes

The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present. If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Past Quotes , Listening 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

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Song 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