Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnikis an American writer and essayist. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism since 1986—and as the author of the essay collection Paris to the Moon, an account of five years that Gopnik, his wife Martha, and son Luke spent in the French capital...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
writing joy said
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.
cooking sides showy
Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.
men people doe
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? 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; 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.
people world causes
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. 'Credibility' is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we'll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.
beautiful song art
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.
hangover believe reality
Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution perhaps the first modern political institution.
art skills drawing
Drawing need not be the bones of art, but skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment.
player drawing risk
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.
faith art practice
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.
thinking good-times sometimes
Sometimes having a good time can be the outward evidence of a deep re-thinking.
growing-up coffee food-culture
You can't have a decent food culture without a decent coffee culture: the two things grow up together.
beautiful men mind
When handsome men or beautiful women take up the work of the intellect, it impresses us because we know they could have chosen other paths to being impressive; 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.
stars rocks add
I rush to add that I find the Web infinitely useful for rustling up information, settling arguments or locating the legends of rock stars.
wall block writing
Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.