The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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The Relationship Between Creativity and Mental Illness
The Relationship Between Creativity and Mental Illness

The science behind the “tortured genius” myth and what it reveals about how the creative mind actually works.

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Anna Deavere Smith on Discipline and Learning to Stop Letting Others Define You
Anna Deavere Smith on Discipline and Learning to Stop Letting Others Define You

“What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.”

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The Poetics of the Psyche: Adam Phillips on Why Psychoanalysis Is Like Literature and How Art Soothes the Soul
The Poetics of the Psyche: Adam Phillips on Why Psychoanalysis Is Like Literature and How Art Soothes the Soul

“Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.”

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Zelda Fitzgerald’s Little-Known Art
Zelda Fitzgerald’s Little-Known Art

From Alice in Wonderland to Times Square, a delicate dance of the imagination.

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Tom Gauld’s Brilliant Literary Cartoons Blur the Artificial Line Between “High” and “Pop” Culture
Tom Gauld’s Brilliant Literary Cartoons Blur the Artificial Line Between “High” and “Pop” Culture

From Hemingway’s hangovers to the messiness of creative collaborations, wryly witty visual satire of intellectualism.

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Whitman’s Urban Reverie: A Passionate Ode to the City from the Poet Laureate of Nature
Whitman’s Urban Reverie: A Passionate Ode to the City from the Poet Laureate of Nature

“Give me comrades and lovers by the thousand!.. Give me the streets of Manhattan!”

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Albert Camus on Happiness and Love, Illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton
Albert Camus on Happiness and Love, Illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton

“If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them … they could perceive what they have made of us.”

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Anthony Trollope’s Witty and Wise Advice on How to Be a Successful Writer
Anthony Trollope’s Witty and Wise Advice on How to Be a Successful Writer

“My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who… will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.”

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Dare to Disturb the Universe: Madeleine L’Engle on Creativity, Censorship, Writing, and the Duty of Children’s Books
Dare to Disturb the Universe: Madeleine L’Engle on Creativity, Censorship, Writing, and the Duty of Children’s Books

“We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we’ll likely find them, and we may get taken over by them.”

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Italo Calvino on Distraction, Procrastination, and Newspapers as the Proto-Time-Waster
Italo Calvino on Distraction, Procrastination, and Newspapers as the Proto-Time-Waster

“Every day I tell myself that reading newspapers is a waste of time, but then … I cannot do without them. They are like a drug.”

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