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

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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?

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Campus Liberal One

Bagwalas

Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

ADAM GOPNIK

Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.
ADAM GOPNIK

Engage Magician Maze
The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present.
ADAM GOPNIK

Back Befogged Listening might Often Still Unknowable
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

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

Distract Helpful Something
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

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

Distance Fault Language Simple
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

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

Invented
Writing doesn’t come easily to anyone, I think, certainly not to me. But pressure and practice does lend a certain fluency
ADAM GOPNIK

Anyone Certainty Easily Fluency Think
The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

ADAM GOPNIK

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

Brutality Scale Scandal
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

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

Idea Mistrust Talking Year
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

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 Dressed Everything Laborer Long
Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this:

ADAM GOPNIK

Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this:
ADAM GOPNIK

Alchemies Childbirth Self Strangest
That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.

ADAM GOPNIK

That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.
ADAM GOPNIK

Amplification Evident Mordantly Paralyzing Paranoia Preëmptive Real Self Soundtrack Towards
The blankness invites scribbling on, mental drawing , and the best feeling I know – apart from the more obvious sensual ones – is the feeling of putting down the first thought and seeing it turn into symbols.

ADAM GOPNIK

The blankness invites scribbling on, mental drawing , and the best feeling I know – apart from the more obvious sensual ones – is the feeling of putting down the first thought and seeing it turn into symbols.
ADAM GOPNIK

Best Blackness Drawing Invite Know Obvious One Scribbling Sensual
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

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

Ingredient Most Openly Protein Sleeve Valued Wore Year
We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.
ADAM GOPNIK

First Language Our Second Swim
Writing well isn’t just a question of winsome expression, but of having found something big and true to say and having found the right words to say it in

ADAM GOPNIK

Writing well isn’t just a question of winsome expression, but of having found something big and true to say and having found the right words to say it in
ADAM GOPNIK

Expression Found Say Something Sweet Winsome Word
Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist…
ADAM GOPNIK

Contemporary Kid Long Oddest Unexpected

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