The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “Zadie Smith”

The Best of Brain Pickings 2020
The Best of Brain Pickings 2020

A glance over the shoulder of time to reveal the patterns, themes, and ideas that steady us and shelter us in the tempest of life.

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Creativity in the Time of COVID: Zadie Smith on Writing, Love, and What Echoes Through the Hallway of Time Suddenly Emptied of Habit
Creativity in the Time of COVID: Zadie Smith on Writing, Love, and What Echoes Through the Hallway of Time Suddenly Emptied of Habit

“There is no great difference between novels and banana bread. They are both just something to do. They are no substitute for love… Love is not something to do, but… something to go through — that must be why it frightens so many of us and why we so often approach it indirectly.”

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The Best of Brain Pickings 2018
The Best of Brain Pickings 2018

The splendors of the unknown, the uncertain, and the unclassifiable, truth and beauty at the intersection of poetry and science, the timeless tangles of the heart.

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Zadie Smith on What Writers Can Learn from Some of History’s Greatest Dancers
Zadie Smith on What Writers Can Learn from Some of History’s Greatest Dancers

“Between propriety and joy choose joy.”

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The Artist and the Anguish of the American Dream: Zadie Smith’s Love-Hate Letter to New York
The Artist and the Anguish of the American Dream: Zadie Smith’s Love-Hate Letter to New York

“The greatest thing about Manhattan is the worst thing about Manhattan: self-actualization.”

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Favorite Books of 2020
Favorite Books of 2020

Audre Lorde, Keith Haring, Bruce Lee, chance, love, black holes, constraint as a catalyst of creativity, and a whisper of Whitman.

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Zadie Smith Reads Frank O’Hara’s Love Poem to Time via an Old-Fashioned Telephone Line
Zadie Smith Reads Frank O’Hara’s Love Poem to Time via an Old-Fashioned Telephone Line

A bittersweet serenade to the bidirectional pull of existence.

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Favorite Books of 2018
Favorite Books of 2018

The anatomy of feeling, the science of psychedelics, Ursula K. Le Guin’s final poetry collection, arresting essays by Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit, Anne Lamott, and Audre Lorde, a physicist’s lyrical meditation on science and spirituality, and more.

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Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair
Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair

“Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.”

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Zadie Smith on the Psychology of the Two Types of Writers
Zadie Smith on the Psychology of the Two Types of Writers

“It’s a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.”

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