Adam Gopnik Quotes, Reading Quotes, Pirate Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Reading Quotes , Pirate Quotes

I try to turn a written thing, when I'm in trouble with it, into a spoken thing: I start imagining what I would say to someone if I were trying to tell the story or make the argument.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Trying Quotes , Stories 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Crazy Quotes , Men Quotes

What drives innovation is abundance and ease, not the pressure of scarcity.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Innovation Quotes , Scarcity Quotes

Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Wall Quotes , Block Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Regret Quotes , Joy Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Magic Quotes , Mind 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Past 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Secret Quotes , Quality Quotes

Drawing is one of those things which sit on the uneasy bending line between instinct and instruction, where seeming perversity eventually trumps pleasure as the card players and the kibitzers interact and new thrills are sought.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Player Quotes , Drawing 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Joy 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Men 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Stars Quotes , Rocks Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Loneliness Quotes , Feelings 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Mind Quotes , Essentials 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Writing Quotes , Heart Quotes

What we eat is the one simplest way to declare who we are - the table reflects our values with a clarity that few other theaters of human behaviour posses.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Behaviour Quotes , Tables Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Growing Up Quotes , Coffee 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Father Quotes , Writing 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Song Quotes