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For a first look at someone we may sleep with, or a last look at someone we love.

Adam Gopnik

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
I don’t miss the obligation to be opinionated, but I do regret the chance to share a joy.
ADAM GOPNIK

Chance Joy Miss Missing Obligation Opinionated Regret Share
It was the grander French one: Why not kill yourself tonight? That the answers come to much the same thing in the end-easy does it
ADAM GOPNIK

Answer Country Easy Grander Kill Same Thing Tonight Yourself
Music is a current of hard choices made to seem easy by the mind.
ADAM GOPNIK

Choice Current Easy Made Mind Mindset Music Okay Seem
A good analogy [Charlie Hebdo] in lots of ways is “South Park” – the hugely popular American cartoon show – and the things that the “South Park” creators have created, like “The Book Of Mormon,” the Broadway musical.
ADAM GOPNIK

Analogy Book Cartoon Charlie Hebdo Country Good Musical Popular South Park
I think that we’re always drawn – particularly sophisticated people – are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.
ADAM GOPNIK

Always Drawn Idea Particularly People Sophisticated Think Thinking
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 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

Book Contemporary Kid Knowledge Literature Long Oddest Unexpected
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
We don’t know that we’ve lost half a minute from our lives but we feel it somehow, we feel its absence.
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Emotion Eye Feel Lost Minute Name Somehow Thinking
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
I think – the more sentences you write, the more sentences you have written, if that slightly Zen confection makes any sense.
ADAM GOPNIK

Confection Make More Think Sense Sentence Slightly Write Written
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 scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.
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Brutality Country Life Moral Scale Scandal
Fanaticism comes in as many flavors as there are human beings.
ADAM GOPNIK

Come Fanaticism Flavor Human Being Many
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.
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Country Eerie Legend Library Long People Purpose Serious Shelved Space Time
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
The basic human rhythm of petty malevolence, sordid moneygrubbing, and official violence, illuminated by occasional bursts of loyalty or desire or tenderness, will go on.
ADAM GOPNIK

Burst Human Illuminated Malevolence Moneygrubbing Occasional Official Pretty Rhythm Sordid Violence
Art without accomplishment becomes a form of faith, sustained more by the intensity of its common practice than by the pleasure it gives to its adherents in private.
ADAM GOPNIK

Accomplishment Art Become Faith Intensity More Practice Sustained
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
Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share.
ADAM GOPNIK

Buzz Buzzing Feeling Give Giving Head Idea Merely Start Try
Lose your schematic conventions by finding some surprising symbol or shape in the welter of shades, and draw that.
ADAM GOPNIK

Convention Drawing Finding Los Schematic Shade Shape Surprising Symbol Welter
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
A fact about photography: we can look at people’s faces in photographs with an intensity and intimacy that in life we normally only reserve for extreme emotional states
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Emotional Fact Intensity Look People Photography Sleep
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
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
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

For a first look at someone we may sleep with, or a last look at someone we love.

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For a first look at someone we may sleep with, or a last look at someone we love.

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