The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “letters”

Patti Smith Reads Her Beautiful Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe About How He Taught Her What It Means to Be an Artist
Patti Smith Reads Her Beautiful Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe About How He Taught Her What It Means to Be an Artist

“You drew me from the darkest period of my young life, sharing with me the sacred mystery of what it is to be an artist.”

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Great Writers on the Power of Music
Great Writers on the Power of Music

Kurt Vonnegut, Susan Sontag, Aldous Huxley, Oliver Sacks, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Friedrich Nietzsche, and more.

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Iris Murdoch on Love and Chance
Iris Murdoch on Love and Chance

“Everything that is important and valuable and good belongs with the little piece of us which is not mechanical.”

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John Keats’s Exquisite Love Letter to Fanny Brawne
John Keats’s Exquisite Love Letter to Fanny Brawne

“Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet.”

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Lou Andreas-Salomé, the World’s First Woman Psychoanalyst, on Creativity and the Relationship Between the Mind and the Body, in Letters to Rilke
Lou Andreas-Salomé, the World’s First Woman Psychoanalyst, on Creativity and the Relationship Between the Mind and the Body, in Letters to Rilke

“All art begins [as] a calling forth of life in its still concealed mysteriousness.”

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Steinbeck and the Difficult Art of the Friend Breakup
Steinbeck and the Difficult Art of the Friend Breakup

“I can’t consider you a friend when out of every contact there comes some intentionally wounding thing.”

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The Angels and Demons of Genius: Robert Lowell on What It’s Like to Be Bipolar
The Angels and Demons of Genius: Robert Lowell on What It’s Like to Be Bipolar

“My disease, alas, gives one (during its seizures) a headless heart.”

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W.E.B. Dubois’s Magnificent Letter of Advice to His Teenage Daughter
W.E.B. Dubois’s Magnificent Letter of Advice to His Teenage Daughter

“Be honest, frank and fearless and get some grasp of the real values of life… Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself.”

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Seneca on Overcoming Fear and the Surest Strategy for Protecting Yourself from Misfortune
Seneca on Overcoming Fear and the Surest Strategy for Protecting Yourself from Misfortune

“If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.”

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Charles Darwin’s Touching Letter of Appreciation to His Best Friend and Greatest Champion
Charles Darwin’s Touching Letter of Appreciation to His Best Friend and Greatest Champion

“You are the one living soul from whom I have constantly received sympathy… I never forget for even a minute how much assistance I have received from you.”

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