Adam Gopnik Quotes, Past Quotes, Listening 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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Past Quotes , Listening 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

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

Writing doesn't come easily to anyone, I think, certainly not to me. But pressure and practice does lend a certain fluency, I think - the more sentences you write, the more sentences you have written, if that slightly Zen confection makes any sense.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Thinking 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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Men Quotes

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

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Magic Quotes , Mind 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

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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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Drawing Quotes , Shapes 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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Giving 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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Winning 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

For me, the beauty of the blank page, or empty screen,staring up at nine thirty after two cups of coffee and a deep breath remains unique. The blankness invites scribbling on, mental drawing , and the best feeling I know - apart from the more obvious sensual ones - is the feeling of putting down the first thought and seeing it turn into symbols. Making an idea into an emotion.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Coffee Quotes , Unique Quotes

Leafing through Forbes or Fortune [magazine]s is like reading the operating manual of a strangely sanctimonious pirate ship

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Reading Quotes , Pirate Quotes

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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Travel Quotes , Swim Quotes

The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Mean Quotes

Love, like light, is a thing that is enacted better than defined: we know it afterward by the traces it leaves on paper.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Light Quotes , Paper 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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Father Quotes , Writing Quotes

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

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Bookstores Quotes , Stuff 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

There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it. The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Two Quotes