The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “listening is telling”

Rebecca Solnit on Breaking Silence as Our Mightiest Weapon Against Oppression
Rebecca Solnit on Breaking Silence as Our Mightiest Weapon Against Oppression

“We are our stories, stories that can be both prison and the crowbar to break open the door of that prison.”

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Inside Oliver Sacks’s Creative Process: The Beloved Writer’s Never-Before-Seen Manuscripts, Brainstorm Sheets, and Notes on Writing, Creativity, and the Brain
Inside Oliver Sacks’s Creative Process: The Beloved Writer’s Never-Before-Seen Manuscripts, Brainstorm Sheets, and Notes on Writing, Creativity, and the Brain

Inside the “buzzing, blooming chaos” of a brilliant mind at work.

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How a Synesthete Experiences Bach: An Empathic Journey into Sound Through Minimalist Motion, Shape, and Color
How a Synesthete Experiences Bach: An Empathic Journey into Sound Through Minimalist Motion, Shape, and Color

An animated invitation to inhabit a rare neurological crossing of the senses.

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William Faulkner on What Sherwood Anderson Taught Him About Writing, the Artist’s Task, and Being an American
William Faulkner on What Sherwood Anderson Taught Him About Writing, the Artist’s Task, and Being an American

“To be a writer, one has first got to be what he is.”

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16 Overall Favorite Books of 2016
16 Overall Favorite Books of 2016

From loneliness to love to black holes, by way of Neil Gaiman, Annie Dillard, and Mary Oliver.

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Virginia Woolf on the Defiant Truthfulness of the Soul and Our Elemental Human Need for Communication
Virginia Woolf on the Defiant Truthfulness of the Soul and Our Elemental Human Need for Communication

“Communication is health; communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty… if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it.”

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The Poetics of Protest and Prayer: Mary Ruefle on the Different Powers of the Voice Raised and the Voice Lowered
The Poetics of Protest and Prayer: Mary Ruefle on the Different Powers of the Voice Raised and the Voice Lowered

“Cries and whispers. A bang or a whimper. Whatever the case, if we want to be heard, we must raise our voice, or lower it.”

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Alchemy and the Transmutation of Ignorance Into Truth: Lewis Thomas’s Prescient 1983 Manifesto for the Humanity-Saving Value of Social Science
Alchemy and the Transmutation of Ignorance Into Truth: Lewis Thomas’s Prescient 1983 Manifesto for the Humanity-Saving Value of Social Science

“In all of nature there is nothing so threatening to humanity as humanity itself.”

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The Conscience of Words: Susan Sontag on the Wisdom of Literature, the Danger of Opinions, and the Writer’s Task
The Conscience of Words: Susan Sontag on the Wisdom of Literature, the Danger of Opinions, and the Writer’s Task

“A writer ought not to be an opinion-machine… The job of the writer is to make us see the world as it is, full of many different claims and parts and experiences.”

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Poet Ann Lauterbach on Why We Make Art and How Art Makes Us
Poet Ann Lauterbach on Why We Make Art and How Art Makes Us

“The crucial job of artists is to find a way to release materials into the animated middle ground between subjects, and so to initiate the difficult but joyful process of human connection.”

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