The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “language”

Mapping the Heavens: How Cosmology Shaped Our Understanding of the Universe and the Strange Story of How the Term “Black Hole” Was Born
Mapping the Heavens: How Cosmology Shaped Our Understanding of the Universe and the Strange Story of How the Term “Black Hole” Was Born

From Calcutta’s most macabre prison to the ivory towers of Cambridge, by way of ancient mythology and Einstein.

read article

Daytime Visions: A Tender and Unusual Illustrated Alphabet Celebrating the Whimsy of Words
Daytime Visions: A Tender and Unusual Illustrated Alphabet Celebrating the Whimsy of Words

“Words are a wonderful kind of glue.”

read article

A Darkly Delightful 1905 Poem Celebrating Punctuation, Newly Illustrated in Silkscreened Typographic Art
A Darkly Delightful 1905 Poem Celebrating Punctuation, Newly Illustrated in Silkscreened Typographic Art

“The semicolons’ mournful racket is drowned out by surrounding brackets…”

read article

Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on the Deeper Meanings of Friendship, Love, and Heartbreak
Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on the Deeper Meanings of Friendship, Love, and Heartbreak

“All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.”

read article

Gertrude Stein’s “Word Portrait” of the Love of Her Life, Illustrated
Gertrude Stein’s “Word Portrait” of the Love of Her Life, Illustrated

“Some one who was living was almost always listening. Some one who was loving was almost always listening.”

read article

Strong as a Bear: An Illustrated Celebration of Animals and Their Emotional Presence in Language
Strong as a Bear: An Illustrated Celebration of Animals and Their Emotional Presence in Language

Free as a bird, busy as a bee, and the rest of the metaphorical menagerie of the human imagination.

read article

Audre Lorde on the Vulnerability of Visibility and Our Responsibility, to Ourselves and Others, to Break Our Silences
Audre Lorde on the Vulnerability of Visibility and Our Responsibility, to Ourselves and Others, to Break Our Silences

“That visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.”

read article

Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Anger, Forgiveness, and What Maturity Really Means
Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Anger, Forgiveness, and What Maturity Really Means

“To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt.”

read article

A Questionnaire for the Immodest and Curious: Clever Puzzles, Riddles, and Word Games from Nabokov’s Love Letters to His Wife
A Questionnaire for the Immodest and Curious: Clever Puzzles, Riddles, and Word Games from Nabokov’s Love Letters to His Wife

“Kisses, my love, from your eyebrows down to your knees and back.”

read article

How to Listen Between the Lines: Anna Deavere Smith on the Art of Listening in a Culture of Speaking
How to Listen Between the Lines: Anna Deavere Smith on the Art of Listening in a Culture of Speaking

“Some people use language as a mask. And some want to create designed language that appears to reveal them but does not.”

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.)