A Quote by Adam Gopnik

Lose your schematic conventions by finding some surprising symbol or shape in the welter of shades, and draw that. — © Adam Gopnik
Lose your schematic conventions by finding some surprising symbol or shape in the welter of shades, and draw that.
There are all sorts of losses people suffer - from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.
You don't want to move toward some utopian literary situation where everybody's free of all conventions. That's ridiculous! Conventions are what you need. You have nothing to break down if you don't have conventions.
It is surprising, in the welter of questions that one gets at (AGMs), how few actually relate to the performance of the company, or the decisions taken by the board in particular areas.
You have to be disciplined because if you lose your discipline and lose your shape, we're playing against better players, so they'll take advantage.
I feel ashamed tonight that we treated Lennox Lewis the way we did because he gave it all his effort but everytime Don King's involved, you can expect a draw to come from somewhere. Ask Pernell Whitaker about the Julio Cesar Chavez fight...I thought Evander Holyfield gave a very game effort, but you win some and you lose some...tonight I'm upset because Lennox Lewis did not lose and it was not a draw. It's as simple as that.
The key to finding your remarkability is to think about what makes you surprising, interesting, or novel.
Filmmaking is finding a piece of granite and you start to chip away and then you have the shape of a head, the shape of the arm, you can see the shape of the face and the face starts to gather character. You have to find it.
What is the crowning glory of your civilization... the symbol as clear a statement as the pyramids, the Parthenon, the cathedrals? What is this symbol? What is its name? Its name is Junk. Junk is the rusty, lovely, brilliant symbol of the dying years of your time. Junk is your ultimate landscape.
Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on. The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family.
Some games you win, some you lose, and some you draw.
In some ways, the finding that financial education doesn't provide long-term payoffs is hardly surprising. After all, how much do you remember from your high school chemistry class? Unless you use chemistry at work, you probably don't recall much about ionic bonding.
Civilization has imposed countless restrictions and conventions on each of us, with the result that the subconscious in the majority of us has become a storage room without a key. We are forced to suppress or forget so many events and ideas and thoughts that those to which we should have access are lost in the welter. However, there are people who seem capable of unlocking this part of their minds and extracting relevant information.
In the welter of statistics about selected ethnic origins (singular or multiple) in the last census, one finding was often overlooked. Of the 25,309,330 people living in Canada in 1986, only 69,065 declared themselves as Canadians.
There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.
In Islamic theology, the phallic symbol is very important. Your biggest phallic symbol is New York City and your tallest building will be the phallic symbol they will hit.
As you age, you have this vast cauldron of experience to draw from. Some of the experiences are great; some of them you wish you'd never had. But all of them shape the work that you do and the person you become. It's just inevitable.
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