“As satirists have pointed out for millennia, civilized behavior is artificial and ridiculous: it means pretending to be glad to see people you aren’t glad to see, praising parties you wished you hadn’t gone to, thanking friends for presents you wish you hadn’t received. Training kids to feign a passion is the art of parenting. The passions they really have belong only to them.”

—  Adam Gopnik

How to Raise a Prodigy, The New Yorker (2018)

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Adam Gopnik 26
American journalist 1956

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