Adam Gopnik Quotes, America Quotes, People Quotes

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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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , America Quotes , People 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Past Quotes , Listening 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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Sometimes having a good time can be the outward evidence of a deep re-thinking.

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The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Loneliness Quotes , Feelings Quotes

For all the years I'd spent talking about pictures, the truth was that I had no idea how to draw or what it felt like to do it. I would mistrust a poetry critic who couldn't produce a rhyming couplet. Could one write about art without knowing how to draw?

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Art Quotes , Writing Quotes

Big writers become a kind of shared climate.

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I don't miss the obligation to be opinionated, but I do regret the chance to share a joy.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Regret Quotes , Joy Quotes

The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else's fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors, that any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on your not yet having spoken English loudly enough.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Distance Quotes , Believe 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...

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Book Quotes , Kids 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Joy 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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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Giving Quotes

A good analogy [Charlie Hebdo] in lots of ways is "South Park" - the hugely popular American cartoon show - and the things that the "South Park" creators have created, like "The Book Of Mormon," the Broadway musical. If I were a devout Mormon, I would be offended by a lot of things that go on in "The Book Of Mormon," right? It mocks mercilessly the pretensions to truth of Mormonism and the pretensions to virtue of Mormon missionaries.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Book Quotes , Charlie Hebdo 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Years Quotes , Ingredients 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.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Eerie Quotes , Space 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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Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

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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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The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Brutality Quotes , Scandal 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