At the Strangers' Gate Quotes

“Tenderness toward one's lost self is sentimental; tenderness toward one's lost longings is just life.”
― Adam Gopnik, At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York

“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.”
― Adam Gopnik, At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York