The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “storytelling”

Pattern, Perspective, and Trust: Barry Lopez on Storytelling
Pattern, Perspective, and Trust: Barry Lopez on Storytelling

“It is through story… that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us.”

read article

Rebecca Solnit on Rewriting the World’s Broken Stories and the Paradigm-Shifting Power of Calling Things by Their True Names
Rebecca Solnit on Rewriting the World’s Broken Stories and the Paradigm-Shifting Power of Calling Things by Their True Names

“To name something truly is to lay bare what may be brutal or corrupt — or important or possible — and key to the work of changing the world is changing the story.”

read article

Life on a Möbius Strip: The Greatest Moth Story Ever Told, About the Unlikely Paths That Lead Us Back to Ourselves
Life on a Möbius Strip: The Greatest Moth Story Ever Told, About the Unlikely Paths That Lead Us Back to Ourselves

“…a living testament to the incredibly improbable trip that we’re on.”

read article

The Eternal Child Inside: Maurice Sendak on Storytelling and Creativity
The Eternal Child Inside: Maurice Sendak on Storytelling and Creativity

On the lifelong pleasure of “having your child self intact and alive and something to be proud of.”

read article

A State of Wonder: Margaret Atwood on How Technology Shapes Storytelling While Obeying Its Eternal Constants
A State of Wonder: Margaret Atwood on How Technology Shapes Storytelling While Obeying Its Eternal Constants

“Everybody is telling a ‘Story of My Life’ to themselves all the time.”

read article

The Shape of Music: Maurice Sendak’s Insightful Forgotten Meditation on Fantasy, Feeling, and the Key to Great Storytelling
The Shape of Music: Maurice Sendak’s Insightful Forgotten Meditation on Fantasy, Feeling, and the Key to Great Storytelling

“Fantasy and feeling lie deeper than words… and both demand a more profound, more biological expression, the primitive expression of music.”

read article

Chinua Achebe on How Storytelling Helps Us Survive History’s Rough Patches
Chinua Achebe on How Storytelling Helps Us Survive History’s Rough Patches

“There is no one way to anything.”

read article

Billy Collins Reads His Homage to Aristotle
Billy Collins Reads His Homage to Aristotle

A wonderful ode to how the great Greek philosopher shaped the paradigm of storytelling.

read article

The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story
The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story

“The great writer’s gift to a reader is to make him a better writer.”

read article

Toni Morrison on How to Be Your Own Story and Reap the Rewards of Adulthood in a Culture That Fetishizes Youth
Toni Morrison on How to Be Your Own Story and Reap the Rewards of Adulthood in a Culture That Fetishizes Youth

“True adulthood… is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of.”

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.)