The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “diaries”

Why Emotional Excess is Essential to Writing and Creativity
Why Emotional Excess is Essential to Writing and Creativity

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”

read article

Susan Sontag’s List of Rules and Duties for Being 24
Susan Sontag’s List of Rules and Duties for Being 24

“Don’t criticize publicly anyone at Harvard.”

read article

An Institution Committed to the Dulling of the Feelings: Susan Sontag on Marriage
An Institution Committed to the Dulling of the Feelings: Susan Sontag on Marriage

“Marriage is based on the principle of inertia.”

read article

Charles Darwin’s List of the Pros and Cons of Marriage
Charles Darwin’s List of the Pros and Cons of Marriage

“My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all.”

read article

Susan Sontag on Love: Illustrated Diary Excerpts
Susan Sontag on Love: Illustrated Diary Excerpts

“Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.”

read article

Anaïs Nin on Self-Publishing, the Magic of Letterpress, and the Joy of Handcraft
Anaïs Nin on Self-Publishing, the Magic of Letterpress, and the Joy of Handcraft

“You pit your faculties against concrete problems. The victories are concrete, definable, touchable.”

read article

Anaïs Nin on Why Understanding the Individual is the Key to Understanding Mass Movements
Anaïs Nin on Why Understanding the Individual is the Key to Understanding Mass Movements

“Every individual is representative of the whole, a symptom, and should be intimately understood.”

read article

A List of “Rare Things” From 11th-Century Japanese Court Lady Sei Shonagon, World’s First Blogger
A List of “Rare Things” From 11th-Century Japanese Court Lady Sei Shonagon, World’s First Blogger

“Two women, let alone a man and a woman, who vow themselves to each other forever, and actually manage to remain on good terms to the end.”

read article

Anaïs Nin on Life, Hand-Lettered by Artist Lisa Congdon
Anaïs Nin on Life, Hand-Lettered by Artist Lisa Congdon

“You live out the confusions until they become clear.”

read article

Anaïs Nin on Paris vs. New York, 1939
Anaïs Nin on Paris vs. New York, 1939

“The ivory tower of the artist may be the only stronghold left for human values, cultural treasures, man’s cult of beauty.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)