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I think I’m more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.

Adam Gopnik

That they chose the path of the mind suggests that there is on it something more worthwhile than a circuitous route to the good things that the good-looking get just by showing up
ADAM GOPNIK

Chose Circuitous Good Looking Mind More Path Route Showing Something Suggest Worthwhile
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
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
I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Civilised Core Life Live Mean Think Thinking
That any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on your not yet having spoken English loudly enough.
ADAM GOPNIK

Consequent English Loudly Misunderstanding Simply Spoken Trouble
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
The overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about – was still startling.
ADAM GOPNIK

Desire Happen Hot Overwhelming Something Truly Underlying
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
This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.
ADAM GOPNIK

Absorption Alchemy Experience Kind Literature Reader Self Share
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
Making an idea into an emotion.
ADAM GOPNIK

Emotion Everything Feeling Generate Idea Making Understand
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
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Find Joy Once Said Sentiment Someone True Understand Writing
Paris, on the other hand, looked exactly as it was supposed to look. It wore its heart on its sleeve, and the strange thing was that the heart it wore so openly was in other ways so closed-mysterious, uninviting.
ADAM GOPNIK

Country Exactly Hand Heart Looked Sleeve Supposed
The reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution – perhaps the first modern political institution.
ADAM GOPNIK

British Good Institution Modern Monarchy Perhaps Political Really
Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.
ADAM GOPNIK

Apply Art Beautiful Brain Exist Mind Most Music Singer Song Sophisticated
I rush to add that I find the Web infinitely useful for rustling up information, settling arguments or locating the legends of rock stars.
ADAM GOPNIK

Add Argument Infinitely Information Rock Rush Rushtling Star Web
The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Brutality Country Life Moral Scale Scandal
What we eat is the one simplest way to declare who we are – the table reflects our values with a clarity that few other theaters of human behaviour posses.
ADAM GOPNIK

Behaviour Clarity Declare Emotion Human Reflect Simplest Table Value Way
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
Drawing is one of those things which sit on the uneasy bending line between instinct and instruction, where seeming perversity eventually trumps pleasure as the card players and the kibitzers interact and new thrills are sought.
ADAM GOPNIK

Bending Drawing Instinct Instruction Player Risk Thing Those Uneasy
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
I am a guilty party here – to take, or get, undue credit for domestic virtue, when in truth cooking is the most painless and, in its ways, ostentatious of the domestic chores.
ADAM GOPNIK

Cooking Domestic Guilty Here Most Painless Party Take Truth Undue Virtue
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.
ADAM GOPNIK

Country Eerie Legend Library Long People Purpose Serious Shelved Space Time
New York has always been a place where it is possible to have memories without the experience that conventionally precede them.
ADAM GOPNIK

Always Country Experience Memories Place Possible State Worldwide
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
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 Question Say Something Strong Sweet True Winsome Word Writing

I think I’m more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.

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I think I’m more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.

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