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Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

Adam Gopnik

We don’t know that we’ve lost half a minute from our lives but we feel it somehow, we feel its absence.
ADAM GOPNIK

Emotion Eye Feel Lost Minute Name Somehow Thinking
I think – the more sentences you write, the more sentences you have written, if that slightly Zen confection makes any sense.
ADAM GOPNIK

Confection Make More Think Sense Sentence Slightly Write Written
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
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Desire Happen Hot Overwhelming Something Truly Underlying
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
Whatever sense of professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility:
ADAM GOPNIK

Accomplishment Adult Competence Less Professional relief Sense Sum
It was the grander French one: Why not kill yourself tonight? That the answers come to much the same thing in the end-easy does it
ADAM GOPNIK

Answer Country Easy Grander Kill Same Thing Tonight Yourself
The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else’s fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors
ADAM GOPNIK

Believe Country Distance Error Fault Language Simple
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Analogy Book Cartoon Charlie Hebdo Country Good Musical Popular South Park
If you’re being attacked from all sides, it’s possible you’re doing something right; it’s also possible that you are doing everything wrong.
ADAM GOPNIK

Attacked Believe Possible Problem Right Side Something Trust
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Beauty Black Breath Coffee Cup Empty Idea Page Screen Staring Unique
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
Love, like light, is a thing that is enacted better than defined: we know it afterward by the traces it leaves on paper.
ADAM GOPNIK

Afterward Better Defined Enacted Know Leave Light Love Paper Trace
Lose your schematic conventions by finding some surprising symbol or shape in the welter of shades, and draw that.
ADAM GOPNIK

Convention Drawing Finding Los Schematic Shade Shape Surprising Symbol Welter
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

Burst Human Illuminated Malevolence Moneygrubbing Occasional Official Pretty Rhythm Sordid Violence
Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum
ADAM GOPNIK

Believe Country Encumbered Hangover Mediaeval Monarchy Reality

Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

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Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

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