The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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C.S. Lewis’s Ideal Daily Routine
C.S. Lewis’s Ideal Daily Routine

“It is essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail.”

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Nietzsche’s 10 Rules for Writers, Penned in a Letter to His Lover and Muse
Nietzsche’s 10 Rules for Writers, Penned in a Letter to His Lover and Muse

“Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.”

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A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves
A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves

“The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation… Never to get lost is not to live.”

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Ray Bradbury on Failure, Why We Hate Work, and the Importance of Love in Creative Endeavors
Ray Bradbury on Failure, Why We Hate Work, and the Importance of Love in Creative Endeavors

How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.

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Chinua Achebe on the Meaning of Life and the Writer’s Responsibility in the World
Chinua Achebe on the Meaning of Life and the Writer’s Responsibility in the World

The difference between blind optimism and the urge to improve the world’s imperfection.

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David Foster Wallace on Writing, Self-Improvement, and How We Become Who We Are
David Foster Wallace on Writing, Self-Improvement, and How We Become Who We Are

“Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.”

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Allergy to Originality: Mark Twain and the Remix Nature of All Creative Work, Animated
Allergy to Originality: Mark Twain and the Remix Nature of All Creative Work, Animated

Why why all creative culture is built on “plagiarism, literary debt, appropriation, incorporation, retelling, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, reprise…”

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Jeanette Winterson on Time, Language, Reading, and How Art Creates a Sanctified Space for the Human Spirit
Jeanette Winterson on Time, Language, Reading, and How Art Creates a Sanctified Space for the Human Spirit

“Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don’t accept things for their face value; you don’t have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.”

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The Art of Self-Renewal: The Pioneering Social Scientist John Gardner on How to Keep Your Work and Your Spirit Alive Over the Long Run
The Art of Self-Renewal: The Pioneering Social Scientist John Gardner on How to Keep Your Work and Your Spirit Alive Over the Long Run

“The self-renewing man … looks forward to an endless and unpredictable dialogue between his potentialities an the claims of life – not only the claims he encounters but the claims he invents.”

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How to Write Fat Books: Walter Benjamin’s Principles of the Weighty Tome
How to Write Fat Books: Walter Benjamin’s Principles of the Weighty Tome

A seven-point blueprint to the dark arts of filling pages.

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