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This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

Adam Gopnik

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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Behaviour Clarity Declare Emotion Human Reflect Simplest Table Value Way
There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it.
ADAM GOPNIK

Explore First Goes Journey Kind People Reel Thinking Traveler Two
Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.
ADAM GOPNIK

Art Degree Education Eloquence Eraser Graduate History Nothing Prepare
If I were a devout Mormon, I would be offended by a lot of things that go on in “The Book Of Mormon,” right?
ADAM GOPNIK

Book Devout Go Inspire Mormon Offered Thing
Dinner with water is dinner for prisoners
ADAM GOPNIK

Dinner Food Prisoner Punish Punishment Water
The coffee shop is a great New York institution, but it has terrible coffee. And the more traditional coffee shops are trying to catch up with more sophisticated coffee drinkers.
ADAM GOPNIK

Coffee Country Institution Respect Terrible Traditional Trying
This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.
ADAM GOPNIK

Absorption Alchemy Experience Kind Literature Reader Self Share
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Argument Imagination Spoken Stories Trouble Try Trying Written
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

Cooking Domestic Guilty Here Most Painless Party Take Truth Undue Virtue
New York has always been a place where it is possible to have memories without the experience that conventionally precede them.
ADAM GOPNIK

Always Country Experience Memories Place Possible State Worldwide
The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Brutality Country Life Moral Scale Scandal
Would mistrust a poetry critic who couldn’t produce a rhyming couplet. Could one write about art without knowing how to draw?
ADAM GOPNIK

Draw Knowing Mistrust Poetry Produce Rhythm
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Alcohol Distract Father Finding Helpful Process Something Writing
Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers
ADAM GOPNIK

Keenest Mean Meeting Restaurant Someplace Thinking Wine
Something is missing, we think. And so we long for the thing we’ve missed and can’t name, and out of that wanting – well, everything else rises, good and bad.
ADAM GOPNIK

Bad Good MIssed Missing Name Out Sometimes Think Wanting Well
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Act Cause Certain Everone Interest People Peripheral Pursuit Violently Willing World

This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

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This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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