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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

Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America-more than six million-than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.
ADAM GOPNIK

Correctional Country Fact Height More People Supervision Understand
You learn to sing with, not argue at, your possible readers.
ADAM GOPNIK

Argue Behave Leran Musi Patience Possible Reader Sing Singing With
Drawing need not be the bones of art, but skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment.
ADAM GOPNIK

Accomplishment Art Bone Drawing Need Skeleton Skull
Men choose Hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch. .
ADAM GOPNIK

Choose Crazy Day Disinherited Every Man Monarch Thinking Woman
I think that we’re always drawn – particularly sophisticated people – are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.
ADAM GOPNIK

Always Drawn Idea Particularly People Sophisticated Think Thinking
All tastes have the quality of being in some way artificial and invented. The secret of life is to have enough detachment from your tastes and your values to see that they are a little bit absurd.
ADAM GOPNIK

Artificial Good Invented Little Quality Secret Taste
After all, spinning is its own reward. There wouldn’t be carousels if it weren’t so.
ADAM GOPNIK

After Carousel Honor Own Proud Reward Spinning
Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist…
ADAM GOPNIK

Book Contemporary Kid Knowledge Literature Long Oddest Unexpected
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

Enter Found Individual Like Mind Reason Right Small Something Sound
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.”
ADAM GOPNIK

Childbirth Entirely Friendship Made Marriage Stand Story Strangest Tell
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
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Eye Half Light Longing Looking Lost Minute Rise Shine Soul
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 think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Civilised Core Life Live Mean Think Thinking
Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.
ADAM GOPNIK

Block Keep Often Sense Simplicity Wall Word Writing
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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