The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “oliver sacks memoir”

Hold Still: Sally Mann on the Treachery of Memory, the Dark Side of Photography, and the Elusive Locus of the Self
Hold Still: Sally Mann on the Treachery of Memory, the Dark Side of Photography, and the Elusive Locus of the Self

“Photographs economize the truth; they are always moments more or less illusorily abducted from time’s continuum.”

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Beloved Poet Thom Gunn’s Reading List of 10 Essential Books to Enchant Teenagers with Poetry
Beloved Poet Thom Gunn’s Reading List of 10 Essential Books to Enchant Teenagers with Poetry

“Poetry is of many sorts and is all around us… a rhymed political slogan is poetry of a kind, for example, and the lyrics of a song by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan may be poetry of a very high order.”

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Pioneering Biochemist Erwin Chargaff on the Poetics of Curiosity, the Crucial Difference Between Understanding and Explanation, and What Makes a Scientist
Pioneering Biochemist Erwin Chargaff on the Poetics of Curiosity, the Crucial Difference Between Understanding and Explanation, and What Makes a Scientist

“If I know what I shall find, I do not want to find it. Uncertainty is the salt of life.”

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Anthony Burgess on the Magical Moment He Fell in Love with Music as a Little Boy
Anthony Burgess on the Magical Moment He Fell in Love with Music as a Little Boy

“There is, for everybody, a first time. A psychedelic moment … an instant of recognition of verbally inexpressible spiritual realities, a meaning for the term beauty.”

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How to Treat the Symptoms of a Rising Reputation: David Hume on the Only Adequate Response to Haters
How to Treat the Symptoms of a Rising Reputation: David Hume on the Only Adequate Response to Haters

On choosing the turn of mind that expands your happiness rather than contracting it.

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November 9, 1928: The Trial of Radclyffe Hall and Virginia Woolf’s Exquisite Case for the Freedom of Speech
November 9, 1928: The Trial of Radclyffe Hall and Virginia Woolf’s Exquisite Case for the Freedom of Speech

“Writers produce literature, and they cannot produce great literature until they have free minds. The free mind has access to all knowledge and speculation of its age, and nothing cramps it like a taboo.”

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Conundrum: Pioneering Trans Writer Jan Morris on Gender, Identity, Belonging, and the Integration of Body and Spirit
Conundrum: Pioneering Trans Writer Jan Morris on Gender, Identity, Belonging, and the Integration of Body and Spirit

“There is no norm. We are all different; none of us is entirely wrong; to understand is to forgive.”

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Legendary Physicist Freeman Dyson on God, Unanswerable Questions, and Why Diversity Is the Ruling Law of the Universe
Legendary Physicist Freeman Dyson on God, Unanswerable Questions, and Why Diversity Is the Ruling Law of the Universe

“Our universe is the most interesting of all possible universes, and our fate as human beings is to make it so.”

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9 Books About the Many Meanings of Time: A TED Bookstore Collaboration
9 Books About the Many Meanings of Time: A TED Bookstore Collaboration

From Ada Lovelace to dark matter, a kaleidoscopic lens on life’s most elusive dimension.

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Why We Write About Ourselves: Some of Today’s Most Celebrated Writers on the Art of Telling Personal Stories That Unravel Universal Truth
Why We Write About Ourselves: Some of Today’s Most Celebrated Writers on the Art of Telling Personal Stories That Unravel Universal Truth

“Making art is all about humans and our psychology: who we are, how we behave, what we do with the hand we’ve been dealt. It’s closer to your own bone when it’s a memoir, but the bone is still the bone.”

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