black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near-physical necessity: I must have it.

Adam Gopnik

What do you think leads us to the windows in the first place?
ADAM GOPNIK

Ask First Lead Place Question Think Window
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
Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers
ADAM GOPNIK

Keenest Mean Meeting Restaurant Someplace Thinking Wine
I think I’m more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.
ADAM GOPNIK

Agreeably Intensely More Oiontated Speak Think Thinking 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
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
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

Act Cause Certain Everone Interest People Peripheral Pursuit Violently Willing World
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
I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Civilised Core Life Live Mean Think Thinking
The grace of capitalism is to make wants feel like hopes, so that material objects and stuff can feel like the possibility of something heroic and civic.
ADAM GOPNIK

Capitalism Feel Grace Hope Material Object Possibility Stuff Urgency Want
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
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
Someone once said that the joy is not in writing but in having written. I can’t say I find that to be true, though I understand the sentiment.
ADAM GOPNIK

Find Joy Once Said Sentiment Someone True Understand Writing
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
Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.
ADAM GOPNIK

Engage Lover Magic Magician Master Maze Mind Permanent Poet
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

The sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near-physical necessity: I must have it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near-physical necessity: I must have it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adam Gopnik Quotes