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Whatever sense of professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility:

Adam Gopnik

Protein was the most valued ingredient 250 years ago: It was the rarest thing. Now the rarest thing we have is time: time to cook and time to eat.
ADAM GOPNIK

Heart Ingredient Most Openly Protein Sleeve Valued Wore Year
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
What drives innovation is abundance and ease, not the pressure of scarcity.
ADAM GOPNIK

Abundance Drive Ease Innovate Innovation Pressure Scarcity Thinking
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
I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Civilised Core Life Live Mean Think Thinking
The coffee shop is a great New York institution, but it has terrible coffee. And the more traditional coffee shops are trying to catch up with more sophisticated coffee drinkers.
ADAM GOPNIK

Coffee Country Institution Respect Terrible Traditional Trying
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
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
For all the years I’d spent talking about pictures, the truth was that I had no idea how to draw or what it felt like to do it. I
ADAM GOPNIK

Art Idea Mistrust Poetry Spend Talk Talking Truth Writing Year
I still think the best classic meal in New York is a coffee-shop breakfast – you sort of can’t skip it.
ADAM GOPNIK

Breakfast Classic Coffee Country Meal Skip Sort Think Thinking
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
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
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
When handsome men or beautiful women take up the work of the intellect, it impresses us because we know they could have chosen other paths to being impressive.
ADAM GOPNIK

Beautiful Guy Handsome Impresses Intellect Man Mind Woman Work
The relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios
ADAM GOPNIK

Fear Hysteria Incipient Invitation Note Real Relentless Scenarios Self Ungrounded
There are as many attitudes to cooking as there are people cooking, of course, but I do think that cooking guys tend
ADAM GOPNIK

Attitude Cooking Course Decent Party People Professional Simplicity Thinking

Whatever sense of professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility:

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Whatever sense of professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility:

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