The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “writing”

Ursula K. Le Guin on Where Ideas Come From, the “Secret” of Great Writing, and the Trap of Marketing Your Work
Ursula K. Le Guin on Where Ideas Come From, the “Secret” of Great Writing, and the Trap of Marketing Your Work

“All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.”

read article

Form, Faith, and Freedom: Wendell Berry on What Poetry Teaches Us about the Secret to a Happy Marriage
Form, Faith, and Freedom: Wendell Berry on What Poetry Teaches Us about the Secret to a Happy Marriage

“The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

read article

A Wave in the Mind: Virginia Woolf on Creativity and Consciousness
A Wave in the Mind: Virginia Woolf on Creativity and Consciousness

“A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.”

read article

Italo Calvino on the Unbearable Lightness of Language, Literature, and Life
Italo Calvino on the Unbearable Lightness of Language, Literature, and Life

“The idea of the world as composed of weightless atoms is striking just because we know the weight of things so well.”

read article

Artist Anne Truitt on the Ideal Daily Routine and How Parenting Shapes Our Capacity for Savoring Solitude
Artist Anne Truitt on the Ideal Daily Routine and How Parenting Shapes Our Capacity for Savoring Solitude

“It is heavenly to work until I am tired… [After dinner] I usually return to my solitude, happy to have been in good company, happy to leave it.”

read article

Voltaire on How to Write Well and Stay True to Your Creative Vision
Voltaire on How to Write Well and Stay True to Your Creative Vision

“Beware, lest in attempting the grand, you overshoot the mark and fall into the grandiose.”

read article

The Hand Through the Fence: Pablo Neruda on What a Childhood Encounter Taught Him About Writing and Why We Make Art
The Hand Through the Fence: Pablo Neruda on What a Childhood Encounter Taught Him About Writing and Why We Make Art

“To feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know … widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.”

read article

Are Writers Born or Made? Jack Kerouac on the Crucial Difference Between Talent and Genius
Are Writers Born or Made? Jack Kerouac on the Crucial Difference Between Talent and Genius

“Genius gives birth, talent delivers.”

read article

The Sense of Style: Psycholinguist Steven Pinker on the Art and Science of Beautiful Writing
The Sense of Style: Psycholinguist Steven Pinker on the Art and Science of Beautiful Writing

“Every generation believes that the kids today are degrading the language and taking civilization down with it.”

read article

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s Three Rules of Writing and Four Elements of Style: Timeless Advice from 1914
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s Three Rules of Writing and Four Elements of Style: Timeless Advice from 1914

“Persuasion — the highest form of persuasion at any rate — cannot be achieved without a sense of beauty.”

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.)