Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.
ADAM GOPNIKWriting 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
More Adam Gopnik Quotes
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The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more.
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I think I’m more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.
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Women choose Alice [in Wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think they are disinherited monarchs
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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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You learn to sing with, not argue at, your possible readers.
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We’ve had mass shootings in the United States in the part of violent antiabortion protesters, in the part of violent pro-ISIS militants.
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You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of “I’s,” and a listening audience somehow turns each “I” into a “me.”
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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.
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The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.
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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 don’t miss the obligation to be opinionated, but I do regret the chance to share a joy.
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The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I don’t think the trap and the horror is fanaticism.
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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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After all, spinning is its own reward. There wouldn’t be carousels if it weren’t so.
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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