The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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Susan Sontag on the Perils of Publicity in Creative Work
Susan Sontag on the Perils of Publicity in Creative Work

“Publicity in general is a very destructive thing, for any artist.”

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Legendary Composer Aaron Copland on the Conditions of Creativity, Emotion vs. Intellect, and the Trap of Public Opinion
Legendary Composer Aaron Copland on the Conditions of Creativity, Emotion vs. Intellect, and the Trap of Public Opinion

“The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.”

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How to Be Alone: An Antidote to One of the Central Anxieties and Greatest Paradoxes of Our Time
How to Be Alone: An Antidote to One of the Central Anxieties and Greatest Paradoxes of Our Time

“We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and desirable person.”

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A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves
A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves

“The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation… Never to get lost is not to live.”

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Joyce Carol Oates on Consciousness, Wonder, and the Art of Beholding Beauty
Joyce Carol Oates on Consciousness, Wonder, and the Art of Beholding Beauty

“How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.”

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Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities
Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities

“Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least.”

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Celebrated Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary
Celebrated Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary

Reflections on the value of recording our inner lives from Woolf, Thoreau, Sontag, Emerson, Nin, Plath, and more.

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The Price of Admission: Dan Savage on the Myth of “The One” and the Unsettling Secret of Lasting Love
The Price of Admission: Dan Savage on the Myth of “The One” and the Unsettling Secret of Lasting Love

How the lies we tell each other can become our greatest springboard for self-transcendence.

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The Art of Self-Renewal: The Pioneering Social Scientist John Gardner on How to Keep Your Work and Your Spirit Alive Over the Long Run
The Art of Self-Renewal: The Pioneering Social Scientist John Gardner on How to Keep Your Work and Your Spirit Alive Over the Long Run

“The self-renewing man … looks forward to an endless and unpredictable dialogue between his potentialities an the claims of life – not only the claims he encounters but the claims he invents.”

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Pete Seeger on Combinatorial Creativity, Originality, Equality, and the Art of Dot-Connecting
Pete Seeger on Combinatorial Creativity, Originality, Equality, and the Art of Dot-Connecting

“All of us, we’re links in a chain. And if we do our job right, there will be many, many links to come.”

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