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The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

Adam Gopnik

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
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
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
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
The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more.
ADAM GOPNIK

But Easier First More One Second See Time Visible Visitor
Sometimes having a good time can be the outward evidence of a deep re-thinking.
ADAM GOPNIK

Deep Deeply Evidence Good Outward Sometimes Think Thinking Time
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
There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it.
ADAM GOPNIK

Explore First Goes Journey Kind People Reel Thinking Traveler Two
In an age of malice and bad faith on many sides, I reread White or Thurber or Mitchell and am reminded again that good writing is done, as I said in my elegy for Salinger, with an active eye and ear and an ardent heart, and in no other way.
ADAM GOPNIK

Age Bad Country Eye Faith Good Heart Malice People Reread Thurber Working Writing
This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.
ADAM GOPNIK

Absorption Alchemy Experience Kind Literature Reader Self Share
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
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
Wit and puns aren’t just décor in the mind; they’re essential signs that the mind knows it’s on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.
ADAM GOPNIK

Absence Bug Decor Essential Mind Missing Pun
The World Series is played in my doubtless too-nostalgic imagination in some kind of autumn afternoon light, and seeing it exclusively in the bitter chill of midnight breaks the spell of even the best of games.
ADAM GOPNIK

Autumn Doubtless Game Imagination Kind Light Nostalgic Played Series Some World
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

Capitalism Feel Giving Make Need Perhaps Silly Simple Sin Stuff
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Alive Freedom Giving Make Mean Powerful Richer Time Virtue

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

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The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

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