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Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik Books

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“[T]he relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios--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. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.”

FearDisasterPanicParanoiaHysteriaOverreaction
Author:Adam Gopnik
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“John Stuart Mill certainly underwent a spiritual crisis as a young man, which made him unhappy with the colder kinds of rationalism in which he had been instructed by his father. But he never turned toward any idea of God, a conception he regarded as fatuous and unimpressive, not to say self-evidently silly. He turned instead toward a larger and more humane idea of what reform might be, not his father’s ideal of utilitarian measurement but one that took in Mozart, music, love, and literature. He never stopped thinking that alleviating other people’s pain is the first duty of public policy. What liberals have, he thought, is better than a religion. It is a way of life.”

ReligionAtheismHumanismLiberalismRationalismJohn Stuart Mill
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“Images of suffering are humanizing to all but the hardened fanatic. Watch men die, struggling for dignity, and you cannot deny their humanity. If this is the politics of victimization, then all our impulses of empathy with strangers are the politics of victimization. We learn to care about those who are not like us not when we learn they want the same things we do, but when we learn that they feel pain in the same way we do.”

SufferingHumanityEmpathyVictims
Book:At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York
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“There are at least three moments a month when you are ready to leap across a conter or a front seat to strangle someone: the woman at France Télecom who won't give you the fax ribbons that are there on the counter in front of her because she can't find them on the computer inventory ... the bus driver who won't let an exhausted pregnant woman out the front door of the bus (you're suppose to exit from the rear) from sheer bloody-mindedness. ... My trouble is that I think like a Frenchman: I transform every encounter into a competition in satus and get enraged when I lose it. –100”

StatusEnraged
Book:Paris to the Moon
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“Through it all that first feeling, on a night more than forty years ago, remains my major feeling: I am so pleased to be here that I can hardly believe I am. What New York represents, perfectly and consistently, in literature and life alike, is the idea of Hope. Hope for a new life, for something big to happen, hope for a better life or a bigger apartment. When I leave Paris, I think, I was there. When I leave New York, I still think: Where was I? I was there of course, and I still couldn’t grasp it all. I love Paris, but I believe in New York and its trinity of values: plurality, verticality, possibility. These are stories of happiness in shadow: the shadow of a darkening time and the shadow of human mortality both. I feel the shadows, we all do, and cringe maybe even more than most. But I try to remember that darkness is a subject, too, and need not always be too sad a one. Shadows are all we have to show us the shapes that light can make.”

LightDarknessNew YorkSeptember 11 Attacks
Book:Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York
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“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. The blankness invites scribbling on, mental drawing , and the best feeling I know - apart from the more obvious sensual ones - is the feeling of putting down the first thought and seeing it turn into symbols. Making an idea into an emotion.”

KnowsFirstsTwoIdeasFeelingsTurnsEmotionSeeingPagesUniqueEmptyBreathsRemainsObviousScreensDrawingCoffeeNineSymbolsCupsSensualStaringThirtyInvitesBlankDeep BreathCoffee CupBlank PagesBlankness
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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. '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.”

PeopleIfsWorldStillsCertainCausesInterestWillingVery GoodPursuitViolentDefinedWillingnessStakesCredibilityGood Causes
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“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.”

PeopleMenWorldLooksMayLittlesDoeEndsBigsTodayEasyBitsAnswersHe ManTomorrowLittle BitTonightWhy NotDiminishGlamourUpside DownBig QuestionsKilling YourselfLittle FaithBetter TomorrowHave A Little Faith
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“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.”

KnowsMenMindBeautifulPathGood ThingsIntellectChosenWorthwhileImpressRoutesHandsomeLooking GoodImpressiveBeautiful WomenShowing UpHandsome Men
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“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.”

IfsWayBookShowsWould BeVirtueGoes OnSouthMusicalCreatorParksCartoonBroadwayOffendedCharlieAnalogiesPretensionMormonismBroadway MusicalCharlie HebdoCartoon Shows
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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. 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.”

PeopleIfsThinkingShouldWellsCan DoWorstDevotionJournalismJournalistSatireWorst ThingsFanaticsFanaticismSatirist
Author:Adam Gopnik
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