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
magic mind mazes
Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.
thinking practice trying
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.
writing climate kind
Big writers become a kind of shared climate.
sex writing self
Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: 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." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.
book charlie-hebdo musical
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. If I were a devout Mormon, I would be offended by a lot of things that go on in "The Book Of Mormon," right? It mocks mercilessly the pretensions to truth of Mormonism and the pretensions to virtue of Mormon missionaries.
cooking sides showy
Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.
eerie space long
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.
secret quality littles
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.
writing thinking practice
Writing doesn't come easily to anyone, I think, certainly not to me. But pressure and practice does lend a certain fluency, I think - the more sentences you write, the more sentences you have written, if that slightly Zen confection makes any sense.
years ingredients protein
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.
stuff way bookstores
In bookstores, my stuff is usually filed in the out-of-the-way, additional interest sections.
thinking ideas people
I think that we're always drawn - particularly sophisticated people - are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.
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.
thinking people journalism
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. I think if journalists start doing that then they won't be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won't be practicing satire.