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Vladimir Nabokov on What Makes a Good Reader
“A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.” “All attempts at gaining literary polish must begin with judicious reading,” H.P. Lovecraft advised aspiring writers. We’ve...
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9 Rules for Success by the Victorian Novelist Amelia E. Barr
“Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry… For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.” The secret of success — like its very definition — remains...
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How Not to Worry: Century-old Wisdom on Allaying Anxiety and Living with More...
“We must gain victory, not by assaulting the walls, but by accepting them.” As far as vintage finds go, they hardly get more fortuitous than You Can Master Life (public library) — a marvelous 1934...
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The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses: Walter Benjamin’s Timeless Advice...
“The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.” “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open,” Stephen King advised....
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The Art of Conversation: Timeless, Timely Do’s and Don’ts from 1866
“In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”...
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Susan Sontag on Why Lists Appeal to Us, Plus Her Listed Likes and Dislikes
How lists confer value and guarantee existence. “The list is the origin of culture,” Umberto Eco famously proclaimed. Whether or not he was right about origin, the list is very much a currency of...
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Timeless Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers
Hemingway, Didion, Baldwin, Fitzgerald, Sontag, Vonnegut, Bradbury, Morrison, Orwell, Le Guin, Woolf, and other titans of literature. By popular demand, I’ve put together a periodically updated reading...
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Original Mad Man David Ogilvy on the 10 Qualities of Creative Leaders
The rare talents of trust, gusto, and guts under pressure. Long before the listicle epidemic of the social web, 11th-century Japanese courtesan Sei Shanagon, the world’s first “blogger,” enumerated 7...
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Barthes’s Likes and Dislikes, Illustrated
Champagne over strawberries, Glenn Gould over Vivaldi, romantic music over fidelity, and no telephoning. Several weeks ago, I wrote about Susan Sontag’s meditation on why lists appeal to us, which...
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14-Year-Old George Washington’s 110 Commandments for Cultivating Character
“Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” “The list is the origin of culture,” Umberto Eco proclaimed. “I perceive value, I confer value, I create...
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10 Tips on Writing from Joyce Carol Oates
“Don’t try to anticipate an ideal reader — or any reader. He/she might exist — but is reading someone else.” In a recent tweeting spree, the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates offered ten tips on writing — a...
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David Ogilvy’s Timeless Principles of Creative Management
“If you ever find a man who is better than you are — hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.” Advertising legend David Ogilvy endures not only as the original Mad Man, but also as...
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Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing
“If it sounds like writing … rewrite it.” On July 16, 2001, Elmore Leonard (October 11, 1925–August 20, 2013) made his timeless contribution to the meta-literary canon in a short piece for The New York...
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10 Rules for Creative Projects from Iconic Painter Richard Diebenkorn
“Do search. But in order to find other than what it searched for.” On a recent visit to the Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966 exhibition at San Francisco’s De Young fine arts museum, I...
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Ray Bradbury on How List-Making Can Boost Your Creativity
How to feel your way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of your skull. Susan Sontag argued that lists confer value and guarantee our existence. Umberto Eco saw in them “the...
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33 Books on How to Live: My Reading List for the Long Now Foundation’s Manual...
Books that help us make sense of ourselves, our world, and our place in it. In a recent piece about the Manual for Civilization — the Long Now Foundation’s effort to assemble 3,500 books most essential...
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Tolstoy’s Reading List: Essential Books for Each Stage of Life
Even if one could never “finish” great literature, one has to begin somewhere. Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, Leo Tolstoy (September 9, 1828–November 10, 1910) succumbed to a deep spiritual...
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Rules for the Direction of the Mind: Descartes’s 12 Timeless Tenets of...
“We ought to give the whole of our attention to the most insignificant and most easily mastered facts, and remain a long time in contemplation of them until we are accustomed to behold the truth...
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Anton Chekhov’s 6 Rules for a Great Story
Mastering the essential complementarity of compassion and total objectivity. “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted,” Kurt Vonnegut offered in...
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17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t...
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