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Lose your schematic conventions by finding some surprising symbol or shape in the welter of shades, and draw that.

Adam Gopnik

American long for a closed society in which everything can be bought, where laborers are either hidden away or dressed up as nonhumans, so as not to be disconcerting. This place is called Disney World.
ADAM GOPNIK

Closed Country Dressed Everything Laborer Long Society World
Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.
ADAM GOPNIK

Apply Art Beautiful Brain Exist Mind Most Music Singer Song Sophisticated
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
Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share.
ADAM GOPNIK

Buzz Buzzing Feeling Give Giving Head Idea Merely Start Try
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
Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this:
ADAM GOPNIK

Alchemies Childbirth Connection Friendship Human Marriage Self Sex Strangest Writing
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
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
Men choose Hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch. .
ADAM GOPNIK

Choose Crazy Day Disinherited Every Man Monarch Thinking Woman
The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I don’t think the trap and the horror is fanaticism.
ADAM GOPNIK

Faith Fanaticism Horror People Trap Trick
I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Civilised Core Life Live Mean Think Thinking
I don’t miss the obligation to be opinionated, but I do regret the chance to share a joy.
ADAM GOPNIK

Chance Joy Miss Missing Obligation Opinionated Regret Share
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
Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they’re arguing.
ADAM GOPNIK

Argument Since Editorial Good Mostly Side Winning Writing Your
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
Credibility’ is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we’ll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.
ADAM GOPNIK

Assure Better Cause Credibility Defined Good Kill Lot Now One People Willingness World

Lose your schematic conventions by finding some surprising symbol or shape in the welter of shades, and draw that.

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Lose your schematic conventions by finding some surprising symbol or shape in the welter of shades, and draw that.

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