Adam Gopnik Quotes, Men Quotes, People 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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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

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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Practice 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

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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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.

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

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Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America-more than six million-than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.

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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

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

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

... a fact about photography: we can look at people's faces in photographs with an intensity and intimacy that in life we normally only reserve for extreme emotional states - for a first look at someone we may sleep with, or a last look at someone we love.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Photography Quotes , Sleep 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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What drives innovation is abundance and ease, not the pressure of scarcity.

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You can't have a decent food culture without a decent coffee culture: the two things grow up together.

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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.

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

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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Hangover Quotes , Believe 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.

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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