The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “a burst of light”

The Odd Habits and Curious Customs of Famous Writers
The Odd Habits and Curious Customs of Famous Writers

Color-coded muses, rotten apples, self-imposed house arrest, and other creative techniques at the intersection of the superstitious and the pragmatic.

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The Shape of Spectacular Speech: An Infographic Analysis of What Made MLK’s “I Have a Dream” So Powerful
The Shape of Spectacular Speech: An Infographic Analysis of What Made MLK’s “I Have a Dream” So Powerful

The poetics of presenting, or why beautiful metaphors are better than beautiful slides.

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Gay Talese’s First Mac: The Godfather of Literary Journalism on His Secret Love of Typography
Gay Talese’s First Mac: The Godfather of Literary Journalism on His Secret Love of Typography

The writing craft between an Olivetti typewriter, 512 kB of memory, and a pad of yellow legal paper.

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Isaac Asimov’s Fan Mail to Young Carl Sagan
Isaac Asimov’s Fan Mail to Young Carl Sagan

“You are my idea of a good writer because you have an unmannered style, and when I read what you write, I hear you talking.”

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Love Over Biology: Jennifer Finney Boylan on What It’s Like to Be a Transgender Parent
Love Over Biology: Jennifer Finney Boylan on What It’s Like to Be a Transgender Parent

Why there’s much more to the art of raising a human being than the science of chromosomal alignment.

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What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works
What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works

Bradbury, Eames, Angelou, Gladwell, Einstein, Byrne, Duchamp, Close, Sendak, and more.

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The Story of a Cover Girl: Leading Designers and Illustrators Reimagine Nabokov’s <em>Lolita</em>
The Story of a Cover Girl: Leading Designers and Illustrators Reimagine Nabokov’s Lolita

“Love itself is not selfish, devouring or cruel, but in human beings it suffers a terrible coexistence with those qualities.”

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Amelia Earhart on Motivation, Education, and Human Nature in Letters to Her Mother
Amelia Earhart on Motivation, Education, and Human Nature in Letters to Her Mother

“The more one does the more one can do.”

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A Brief Visual History of Space and Astronomy in 250 Milestones
A Brief Visual History of Space and Astronomy in 250 Milestones

From the Big Bang to the end of time, or what a pioneering female astronomer has to do with Sagan’s petty nemeses.

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Wild Ones: What an Obscure Endangered Butterfly Teaches Us About Parenthood and Being Human
Wild Ones: What an Obscure Endangered Butterfly Teaches Us About Parenthood and Being Human

“Maybe you have to believe in the value of everything to believe in the value of anything.”

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