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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

If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.
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Determine Exactly Full Listening might Room Stanton Still Sure Weeping
Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers
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Keenest Mean Meeting Restaurant Someplace Thinking Wine
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
It mocks mercilessly the pretensions to truth of Mormonism and the pretensions to virtue of Mormon missionaries.
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Mercilessly Missionaries Mock Mormonism Pretension Truth Virtue
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
Would mistrust a poetry critic who couldn’t produce a rhyming couplet. Could one write about art without knowing how to draw?
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Draw Knowing Mistrust Poetry Produce Rhythm
Tomorrow may be a bit better than today; and, after all, you have to have a little faith in people-doesn’t diminish the glamour that clings to the man who turned the question over and look at it, elegantly, upside down.
ADAM GOPNIK

After All Better Cling Diminish Down Elegantly Faith Glamour Man People Question Today Tomorrow Upside
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.
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Find Joy Once Said Sentiment Someone True Understand Writing
You can’t have a decent food culture without a decent coffee culture: the two things grow up together.
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Coffee Culture Decent Food Grow Growing Together Up
We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. […]
ADAM GOPNIK

Assure Call Disaster Imagine Such Thing Unimaginable
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
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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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Care First Last Look Love Sleep Someone Understand
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
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Answer Country Easy Grander Kill Same Thing Tonight Yourself
Love, like light, is a thing that is enacted better than defined: we know it afterward by the traces it leaves on paper.
ADAM GOPNIK

Afterward Better Defined Enacted Know Leave Light Love Paper Trace
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
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
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
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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Autumn Doubtless Game Imagination Kind Light Nostalgic Played Series Some World
I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
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Civilised Core Life Live Mean Think Thinking
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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Beauty Black Breath Coffee Cup Empty Idea Page Screen Staring Unique
It’s really our relief at no longer having to do things we were never good at doing in the first place – relief at never again having to dissect a frog or memorize the periodic table.
ADAM GOPNIK

Again Dissect Doing First Frog Longer. Thing Memorize never Periodic Place relief Table
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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Anyone Journalist Practice Question Target Think Thinking Trying Understand
Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.
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Block Keep Often Sense Simplicity Wall Word Writing
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.
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Back Befogged Listening might Often Past Present Still Unknowable
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
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Believe Country Distance Error Fault Language Simple
That any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on your not yet having spoken English loudly enough.
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Consequent English Loudly Misunderstanding Simply Spoken Trouble
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

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.

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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.

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