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 GOPNIKThe overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about – was still startling.
More Adam Gopnik Quotes
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Drawing need not be the bones of art, but skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment.
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I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say. Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them.
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I still think the best classic meal in New York is a coffee-shop breakfast – you sort of can’t skip it.
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I don’t think there’s any question journalists have become targets, but then I think that – that anyone who tries to practice liberty becomes a target of fanatics.
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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.
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What do you think leads us to the windows in the first place?
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The relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios
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I think if journalists start doing that then they won’t be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won’t be practicing satire.
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Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum
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If I were a devout Mormon, I would be offended by a lot of things that go on in “The Book Of Mormon,” right?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What drives innovation is abundance and ease, not the pressure of scarcity.
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Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.
ADAM GOPNIK