Adam Gopnik Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Sweet, Strong, Writing

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Past, Listening, Might

  Adam Gopnik (2009). “Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life”, p.142, Vintage

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Player, Drawing, Risk

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

  Adam Gopnik

  Bookstores, Stuff, Way

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Writing, Winning, Your Side

  "Facing History" by Adam Gopnik, www.newyorker.com. April 9, 2012.

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Attitude, Party, Thinking

  "Adam Gopnik on Food, Baseball, and The New Yorker". Interview with David Haglund, www.slate.com. November 7, 2011.

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Fear, Real, Self

  "Hurricane Irene: Storm Warnings". www.newyorker.com. August 28, 2011.

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Loyalty, Past, Desire

  "Blows Against the Empire" by Adam Gopnik, www.newyorker.com. August 20, 2007.

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• Dinner with water is dinner for prisoners

  Adam Gopnik

  Water, Dinner, Prisoner

  Adam Gopnik (2011). “The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food”, p.43, Vintage

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Hangover, Believe, Reality

  The New Yorker, September 29, 1997.

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Beautiful, Song, Art

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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.

  Adam Gopnik

  New York, Coffee, Thinking

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Years, Ingredients, Protein

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Thinking, People, Journalism

  "Charlie Hebdo, The Licensed Anarchist Clowns Of French Society". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. January 2, 2016.

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• We've had mass shootings in the United States in the part of violent antiabortion protesters, in the part of violent pro-ISIS militants. The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I don't think the trap and the horror is fanaticism.

  Adam Gopnik

  Thinking, Mass Shootings, Isis

  "Charlie Hebdo, The Licensed Anarchist Clowns Of French Society". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. January 2, 2016.

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Thinking, Practice, Trying

  "Charlie Hebdo, The Licensed Anarchist Clowns Of French Society". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. January 2, 2016.

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Book, Charlie Hebdo, Musical

  Source: www.npr.org

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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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Writing, Joy, Said

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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

  Adam Gopnik

  Regret, Joy, Missing

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Writing, Thinking, Practice

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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

  Adam Gopnik

  Wall, Block, Writing

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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• 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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Coffee, Unique, Ideas

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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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.

  Adam Gopnik

  Writing, Heart, Eye

  Source: www.slate.com

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