Adam Gopnik Quotes

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.

In history as it comes to be written, there is usually some Spirit of the Age which historians can define, but the shape of things is seldom so clear to those who live them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion.

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

I think not knowing what to think of your paintings is a good place to be.

He hasn't said whether he remembers the episode itself - or, if he doesn't, whether that is because it never happened or because it happened too often to keep track. More important, he hasn't said what he thinks about it all from the perspective of 2003.

The dividing line between wish and need was never clear.

I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words.

We are quite at ease in this no man's land of ignorance and doubt and dispute, absorbed in the ambiguities of trying to reach truth by mixing fact with invention.

I think in friendship, you want to be there for your friend, and sometimes you just don't know what to do or the relationship you have with them is not clear enough for you to know what to do.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

I don't know what 'normal' means, anyway.

It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It's better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.

I tend not to look back. It's confusing.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

As a reporter you tend to seek coherence from your subject or your source - it all needs to add up and make sense. In truth, in reality, there's often a great deal of murkiness and muddiness, confusion and contradiction.

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

I mean, the type of art that I enjoy is art that - I enjoy a very broad spectrum, but I especially like art that leaves me a little confused and uncertain as to what just happened.

In carefully scrutinizing the affairs of the past, we find that there are many different opinions about them, and that there are some things that are quite unclear. It is better to regard such things as unknowable.

History shows you prospects by starlight, or at best by the waning moon.

Sometimes when you finish a book, you don't know quite what you've got.

'Westworld' is bizarre. I don't know what to think of 'Westworld.'

There can be an easy way to interpret things some times and it seems like maybe I'm on the wrong side of those interpretations a lot of those times.

We just do not know what is normal.

I do like how the music can be misunderstood.