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

Adam Gopnik

In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.
ADAM GOPNIK

Country Eerie Legend Library Long People Purpose Serious Shelved Space Time
I still think the best classic meal in New York is a coffee-shop breakfast – you sort of can’t skip it.
ADAM GOPNIK

Breakfast Classic Coffee Country Meal Skip Sort Think Thinking
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.
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Back Befogged Listening might Often Past Present Still Unknowable
We don’t know that we’ve lost half a minute from our lives but we feel it somehow, we feel its absence.
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Emotion Eye Feel Lost Minute Name Somehow Thinking
Paris, on the other hand, looked exactly as it was supposed to look. It wore its heart on its sleeve, and the strange thing was that the heart it wore so openly was in other ways so closed-mysterious, uninviting.
ADAM GOPNIK

Country Exactly Hand Heart Looked Sleeve Supposed
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
ADAM GOPNIK

Chose Circuitous Good Looking Mind More Path Route Showing Something Suggest Worthwhile
Tomorrow may be a bit better than today; and, after all, you have to have a little faith in people-doesn’t diminish the glamour that clings to the man who turned the question over and look at it, elegantly, upside down.
ADAM GOPNIK

After All Better Cling Diminish Down Elegantly Faith Glamour Man People Question Today Tomorrow Upside
New York has always been a place where it is possible to have memories without the experience that conventionally precede them.
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Always Country Experience Memories Place Possible State Worldwide
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

Determine Exactly Full Listening might Room Stanton Still Sure Weeping
There are as many attitudes to cooking as there are people cooking, of course, but I do think that cooking guys tend
ADAM GOPNIK

Attitude Cooking Course Decent Party People Professional Simplicity Thinking
Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.
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Art Degree Education Eloquence Eraser Graduate History Nothing Prepare
Women choose Alice [in Wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think they are disinherited monarchs
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Choose Give Herself More Only Understand Woman
The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.
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Alive Freedom Giving Make Mean Powerful Richer Time Virtue
Yet in truth the big question Camus asked was never the Anglo-American liberal one: How can we make the world a little bit better tomorrow?
ADAM GOPNIK

Ask Campus Country Liberal Little Man One People Question Truth
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Best Blackness Drawing Feeling Invite Know Mental Obvious One Scribbling Sensual Symbol
I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Civilised Core Life Live Mean Think Thinking

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

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

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