Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.
ADAM GOPNIKThe overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about – was still startling.
More Adam Gopnik Quotes
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Leafing through Forbes or Fortune [magazine]s is like reading the operating manual of a strangely sanctimonious pirate ship
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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.
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The light in your eyes shines because of the longing in your soul. And the longing in your souls rises because you are looking for the lost half minute.
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We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. […]
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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
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I think I’m more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.
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That any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on your not yet having spoken English loudly enough.
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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
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Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Love, like light, is a thing that is enacted better than defined: we know it afterward by the traces it leaves on paper.
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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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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