Adam Gopnik Quotes, Thinking Quotes, Ideas Quotes

I think that we're always drawn - particularly sophisticated people - are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Ideas 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.

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Fear Quotes , Real Quotes

Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Sex Quotes , Writing Quotes

Writing well isn't just a question of winsome expression, but of having found something big and true to say and having found the right words to say it in, of having seen something large and having found the right words to say it small, small enough to enter an individual mind so that the strong ideas of what the words are saying sound like sweet reason.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Sweet Quotes , Strong Quotes

Drawing need not be the bones of art, but skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Art Quotes , Skeletons Quotes

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

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

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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Travel Quotes , Swim Quotes

Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Education Quotes , Art 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

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

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Tags : Adam Gopnik Quotes , Trying Quotes , Stories 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

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

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