The Marginalian
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Grandmother’s Glass Eye: Elizabeth Bishop on How Poetry Pretends Life into Reality
Grandmother’s Glass Eye: Elizabeth Bishop on How Poetry Pretends Life into Reality

On the glorious “difficulty of combining the real with the decidedly un-real.”

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Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer on Freedom and What Status Really Means for a Writer
Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer on Freedom and What Status Really Means for a Writer

“All worthwhile writing… comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.”

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How Steinbeck Used the Diary as a Tool of Discipline, a Hedge Against Self-Doubt, and a Pacemaker for the Heartbeat of Creative Work
How Steinbeck Used the Diary as a Tool of Discipline, a Hedge Against Self-Doubt, and a Pacemaker for the Heartbeat of Creative Work

“Just set one day’s work in front of the last day’s work. That’s the way it comes out. And that’s the only way it does.”

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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.”

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Kierkegaard on Boredom, Why Cat Listicles Fail to Answer the Soul’s Cry, and the Only True Cure for Existential Emptiness
Kierkegaard on Boredom, Why Cat Listicles Fail to Answer the Soul’s Cry, and the Only True Cure for Existential Emptiness

“The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.”

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Enormous Smallness: The Sweet Illustrated Story of E. E. Cummings and His Creative Bravery
Enormous Smallness: The Sweet Illustrated Story of E. E. Cummings and His Creative Bravery

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

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Pioneering Early-Twentieth-Century Artist and Creative Entrepreneur Wanda Gág on Our Two Selves and How Love Lays Its Claim on Us
Pioneering Early-Twentieth-Century Artist and Creative Entrepreneur Wanda Gág on Our Two Selves and How Love Lays Its Claim on Us

“There is nothing better for us to do than to take ourselves as we find ourselves and make the best of ourselves.”

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This Idea Must Die: Some of the World’s Greatest Thinkers Each Select a Major Misconception Holding Us Back
This Idea Must Die: Some of the World’s Greatest Thinkers Each Select a Major Misconception Holding Us Back

From the self to left brain vs. right brain to romantic love, a catalog of broken theories that hold us back from the conquest of Truth.

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Emerson on Talent vs. Character, Our Resistance to Change, and the Key to True Personal Growth
Emerson on Talent vs. Character, Our Resistance to Change, and the Key to True Personal Growth

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

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2014’s Best Books on Psychology, Philosophy, and How to Live Meaningfully
2014’s Best Books on Psychology, Philosophy, and How to Live Meaningfully

How to be alone, wake up from illusion, master the art of asking, fathom your place in the universe, and more.

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