The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “Brainpickings ten years on”

The Best Music Books of 2012
The Best Music Books of 2012

From the neuroscience of talent to the illustrated Beatles, by way of Zen Buddhism and how creativity works.

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The Science of Our Optimism Bias and the Life-Cycle of Happiness
The Science of Our Optimism Bias and the Life-Cycle of Happiness

“To make progress, we need to be able to imagine alternative realities, and not just any old reality but a better one.”

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Introducing Art Pickings: A Pop-Up Gallery in Partnership with 20×200
Introducing Art Pickings: A Pop-Up Gallery in Partnership with 20×200

Because as Thomas Merton wrote, “art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

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Sylvia Plath Reads “A Birthday Present”: A Rare 1962 Recording
Sylvia Plath Reads “A Birthday Present”: A Rare 1962 Recording

“I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year. / After all I am alive only by accident.”

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How to Break Through Your Creative Block: Strategies from 90 of Today’s Most Exciting Creators
How to Break Through Your Creative Block: Strategies from 90 of Today’s Most Exciting Creators

Refining the machinery of creativity, or what heartbreak and hydraulics have to do with coaxing the muse.

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The Best Graphic Novels and Graphic Nonfiction of 2012
The Best Graphic Novels and Graphic Nonfiction of 2012

From music history to war trials by way of Hunter S. Thompson and Steve Jobs, with a side of Ancient China.

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Henry Miller on Creative Death
Henry Miller on Creative Death

“One aspect of our nature cannot be exalted above another, except and the expense of one or the other.”

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What Will Survive of Us Is Love: Helen Dunmore’s 9 Rules of Writing
What Will Survive of Us Is Love: Helen Dunmore’s 9 Rules of Writing

“A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.”

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As We May Think: Vannevar Bush’s Prescient 1945 Vision for the Information Age, the Power of “Curation,” and the Need for Open-Access Science
As We May Think: Vannevar Bush’s Prescient 1945 Vision for the Information Age, the Power of “Curation,” and the Need for Open-Access Science

“There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.”

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Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, Susan Sontag, Harper Lee, and Other Literary Greats on Censorship
Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, Susan Sontag, Harper Lee, and Other Literary Greats on Censorship

A century of conviction celebrating the freedom to read.

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