The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “Susan Sontag”

How to Read Like a Writer
How to Read Like a Writer

“All the elements of good writing depend on the writer’s skill in choosing one word instead of another.”

read article

A Few Don’ts for Those Beginning to Write Verse from Ezra Pound
A Few Don’ts for Those Beginning to Write Verse from Ezra Pound

“Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.”

read article

Anaïs Nin on Life, Hand-Lettered by Artist Lisa Congdon
Anaïs Nin on Life, Hand-Lettered by Artist Lisa Congdon

“You live out the confusions until they become clear.”

read article

Henry Miller on Reading, the Life of the Mind, and How to Fix Education
Henry Miller on Reading, the Life of the Mind, and How to Fix Education

“Our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water. It applies to the pursuit of the arts as well as to the pursuit of knowledge.”

read article

Alan Turing’s Reading List: Books the Computing Pioneer Borrowed From His School Library
Alan Turing’s Reading List: Books the Computing Pioneer Borrowed From His School Library

What Alice in Wonderland has to do with electromagnetic theory, relativity, and Pluto.

read article

Ezra Pound’s List of the Six Types of Writers, Plus His Two Rules for Forming an Opinion
Ezra Pound’s List of the Six Types of Writers, Plus His Two Rules for Forming an Opinion

A taxonomy of scribe sensibilities, with some advice on how to make up your mind.

read article

How to Read a Poem: “Stored Magic,” Total Transformation, and the Capacity for Creative Wonder
How to Read a Poem: “Stored Magic,” Total Transformation, and the Capacity for Creative Wonder

“True poetic practice implies a mind so miraculously attuned and illuminated that it can form words, by a chain of more-than coincidences, into a living entity.”

read article

Anatomy of Lying
Anatomy of Lying

“[Lying] is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood.”

read article

The Probability That You Are Dreaming Right Now? 1 in 10.
The Probability That You Are Dreaming Right Now? 1 in 10.

Navigating the maze of dream-decisions, dream-consequences, and the invariable world of experiences.

read article

New York Diaries: 400 Years of Great Writers’ Reflections on a Great City
New York Diaries: 400 Years of Great Writers’ Reflections on a Great City

What Jack Kerouac’s existential divide has to do with earmuffs, 9/11, and Edison’s “mechanical mind.”

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.)