The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “creativity”

Oliver Jeffers on the Paradox of Ownership and the Allure of Duality
Oliver Jeffers on the Paradox of Ownership and the Allure of Duality

“We only own something because everybody agrees that we do.”

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The Crossroads of Should and Must: An Intelligent Illustrated Field Guide to Finding Your Bliss
The Crossroads of Should and Must: An Intelligent Illustrated Field Guide to Finding Your Bliss

“Should is how other people want us to live our lives… Choosing Must is the greatest thing we can do with our lives.”

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How to Find Your Bliss: Joseph Campbell on What It Takes to Have a Fulfilling Life
How to Find Your Bliss: Joseph Campbell on What It Takes to Have a Fulfilling Life

“You have to learn to recognize your own depth.”

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Gabriel García Márquez on His Improbable Beginnings as a Writer
Gabriel García Márquez on His Improbable Beginnings as a Writer

“If you’re going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones… After all, there are better ways to starve to death.”

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Roald Dahl on How Illness Emboldens Creativity: A Moving Letter to His Bedridden Mentor
Roald Dahl on How Illness Emboldens Creativity: A Moving Letter to His Bedridden Mentor

“I doubt I would have written a line … unless some minor tragedy had sort of twisted my mind out of the normal rut.”

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The Midwifery of Creativity: Beloved Poet Denise Levertov on How a Great Work of Art Is Born
The Midwifery of Creativity: Beloved Poet Denise Levertov on How a Great Work of Art Is Born

On giving shape to the stimulus “selected by some interior mysterious process out of all the other minutes and hours.”

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The Workhorse and the Butterfly: Ann Patchett on Writing and Why Self-Forgiveness Is the Most Important Ingredient of Great Art
The Workhorse and the Butterfly: Ann Patchett on Writing and Why Self-Forgiveness Is the Most Important Ingredient of Great Art

“The ability to forgive oneself … is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life.”

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The Power of Aesthetic Force: Anna Deavere Smith and Sarah Lewis on Beauty as a Tool of Justice and a Catalyst for “Nonselfing”
The Power of Aesthetic Force: Anna Deavere Smith and Sarah Lewis on Beauty as a Tool of Justice and a Catalyst for “Nonselfing”

“The law represents a part of the people’s will but … the people’s will is moved by beauty.”

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to School: A Charming Catalog of Excuses and an Allegory for How the Human Imagination Works
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to School: A Charming Catalog of Excuses and an Allegory for How the Human Imagination Works

A playful parable about the stories we tell to avoid being wrong and the combinatorial nature of human creativity.

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Virginia Woolf on Writing and Self-Doubt
Virginia Woolf on Writing and Self-Doubt

Consolation for those moments when you can’t tell whether you’re “the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.”

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