Maria Popova
@mariapopova.bsky.social
Creator of The Marginalian (once upon a time called Brain Pickings). Lover of books and tress. Petter of moss. Wonderer. Also: almanacofbirds.org
Pinned
Maria Popova
@mariapopova.bsky.social
· Apr 19
An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I ori…
www.themarginalian.org
In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I shared the morning of my fortieth birthday. They are now a book of cards:
Born 130 years ago today, Henry Williamson touched generations of readers and influenced generations of writers (Rachel Carson among them). His gorgeous ode to the transcendence of the winter sky www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/17/h...
The Unphotographable: Henry Williamson on the Transcendence of the Winter Sky After a Blizzard
“Beyond the shaped and ever-shifting heaps of sand, beyond the ragged horizon of the purple-grey sea, the sun sunk as though it were sent in space.”
www.themarginalian.org
December 1, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Born 130 years ago today, Henry Williamson touched generations of readers and influenced generations of writers (Rachel Carson among them). His gorgeous ode to the transcendence of the winter sky www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/17/h...
Remembering James Baldwin, who returned his borrowed stardust to the universe on this day in 1987, with his abiding wisdom on how to live through your darkest hour:
James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe
“I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of th…
www.themarginalian.org
December 1, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Remembering James Baldwin, who returned his borrowed stardust to the universe on this day in 1987, with his abiding wisdom on how to live through your darkest hour:
"Looking... is a practice, a form of attention paid, which is, for many, the essence of prayer."
Poet Lia Purpura on the art of noticing: www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/04/l...
Poet Lia Purpura on the art of noticing: www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/04/l...
On Looking: Poet Lia Purpura on the Art of Noticing
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way,” William Blake wrote in his most spirited letter. “As a man is, so …
www.themarginalian.org
December 1, 2025 at 5:47 AM
"Looking... is a practice, a form of attention paid, which is, for many, the essence of prayer."
Poet Lia Purpura on the art of noticing: www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/04/l...
Poet Lia Purpura on the art of noticing: www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/04/l...
Oscar Wilde died on this day in 1900. Hear Patti Smith read the stunning letter he penned in prison, where he was thrown for loving whom he loved and where he received the injury that resulted in the cerebral meningitis that killed him www.themarginalian.org/2016/11/07/p...
De Profundis: Patti Smith Reads Oscar Wilde’s Stirring Letter on Suffering and Transcendence, Penned in Prison
“I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me… There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul.”
www.themarginalian.org
December 1, 2025 at 3:28 AM
Oscar Wilde died on this day in 1900. Hear Patti Smith read the stunning letter he penned in prison, where he was thrown for loving whom he loved and where he received the injury that resulted in the cerebral meningitis that killed him www.themarginalian.org/2016/11/07/p...
Meet the woman who set out to save tribal music when the U.S. government set out to erase indigenous culture, traveling far and wide with her cylinder phonograph, trousers, and bow tie www.themarginalian.org/2022/11/03/f...
The Woman Who Saved Native Song
“We understand the people better if we know their music, and we appreciate the music better if we understand the people themselves.”
www.themarginalian.org
December 1, 2025 at 12:15 AM
Meet the woman who set out to save tribal music when the U.S. government set out to erase indigenous culture, traveling far and wide with her cylinder phonograph, trousers, and bow tie www.themarginalian.org/2022/11/03/f...
We all have an "antilibrary." You know, the stack of yet-unread books we might never read. Here is Umberto Eco's wonderful and counterintuitive take on why that unread stack might be as essential for our inner lives as the read www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/u...
Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones
How to become an “antischolar” in a culture that treats knowledge as “an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 30, 2025 at 10:16 PM
We all have an "antilibrary." You know, the stack of yet-unread books we might never read. Here is Umberto Eco's wonderful and counterintuitive take on why that unread stack might be as essential for our inner lives as the read www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/u...
A simple, hard truth from the dear owl. More bird divinations and the story behind them at almanacofbirds.org
November 30, 2025 at 8:01 PM
A simple, hard truth from the dear owl. More bird divinations and the story behind them at almanacofbirds.org
Winter trees as a portal to aliveness – wonderful century-old read from the woman who pioneered wilderness education in schools www.themarginalian.org/2021/11/29/a...
Winter Trees as a Portal to Aliveness
“Eons must have lapsed before the human eye grew keen enough and the human soul large enough to give sympathetic comprehension to the beauty of bare branches laced across changing skies.̶…
www.themarginalian.org
November 30, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Winter trees as a portal to aliveness – wonderful century-old read from the woman who pioneered wilderness education in schools www.themarginalian.org/2021/11/29/a...
At the link, the best of The Marginalian this week in a single place – love against probability, the science and spirituality of fog, and W.S. Merwin's ode to the defiant courage of gratitude in a broken world: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
November 30, 2025 at 3:04 PM
At the link, the best of The Marginalian this week in a single place – love against probability, the science and spirituality of fog, and W.S. Merwin's ode to the defiant courage of gratitude in a broken world: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
Peanuts and the Quiet Pain of Childhood — how Charles M. Schulz made an art of difficult emotions www.themarginalian.org/2015/01/20/c...
Peanuts and the Quiet Pain of Childhood: How Charles M. Schulz Made an Art of Difficult Emotions
“[Charlie Brown] reminded people, as no other cartoon character had, of what it was to be vulnerable, to be small and alone in the universe, to be human — both little and big at the sam…
www.themarginalian.org
November 30, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Peanuts and the Quiet Pain of Childhood — how Charles M. Schulz made an art of difficult emotions www.themarginalian.org/2015/01/20/c...
200 years ago, long before the dawn of pop psychology, the French writer Stendhal wrote with uncommon insight about the stages of falling in and out of love www.themarginalian.org/2012/11/29/s...
Stendhal on the Seven Stages of Romance and Why We Fall Out of Love: Timeless Wisdom from 1822
“To love is to enjoy seeing, touching, and sensing with all the senses, as closely as possible, a lovable object which loves in return.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 30, 2025 at 1:01 PM
200 years ago, long before the dawn of pop psychology, the French writer Stendhal wrote with uncommon insight about the stages of falling in and out of love www.themarginalian.org/2012/11/29/s...
"All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources."
On Mark Twain's birthday, his magnificent letter to Helen Keller when she (yes, even she) was accused of plagiarism www.themarginalian.org/2012/05/10/m...
On Mark Twain's birthday, his magnificent letter to Helen Keller when she (yes, even she) was accused of plagiarism www.themarginalian.org/2012/05/10/m...
All Ideas Are Second-Hand: Mark Twain’s Magnificent Letter to Helen Keller About the Myth of Originality
“The kernel, the soul – let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances – is plagiarism.” Twain’s letter to Hellen Kell…
www.themarginalian.org
November 30, 2025 at 5:47 AM
"All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources."
On Mark Twain's birthday, his magnificent letter to Helen Keller when she (yes, even she) was accused of plagiarism www.themarginalian.org/2012/05/10/m...
On Mark Twain's birthday, his magnificent letter to Helen Keller when she (yes, even she) was accused of plagiarism www.themarginalian.org/2012/05/10/m...
Madeleine L'Engle was born on this day in 1918. Half a lifetime after she staggered the world with "A Wrinkle in Time," she delivered a magnificent lecture about the nature of creativity at the Library of Congress, lost for decades: www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/10/d...
Dare to Disturb the Universe: Madeleine L’Engle on Creativity, Censorship, Writing, and the Duty of Children’s Books
“We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we’ll likely find them, a…
www.themarginalian.org
November 30, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Madeleine L'Engle was born on this day in 1918. Half a lifetime after she staggered the world with "A Wrinkle in Time," she delivered a magnificent lecture about the nature of creativity at the Library of Congress, lost for decades: www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/10/d...
The Thing Itself – C.S. Lewis, born on this day in 1898, on what we long for in our existential longing www.themarginalian.org/2022/09/03/c...
The Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We Long for in Our Existential Longing
“…only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 30, 2025 at 12:19 AM
The Thing Itself – C.S. Lewis, born on this day in 1898, on what we long for in our existential longing www.themarginalian.org/2022/09/03/c...
How to be human – Kahlil Gibran's recipe for our spiritual perfection as a species, even more timely a century later www.themarginalian.org/2025/11/29/k...
How to Be Human: Kahlil Gibran’s Recipe for Our Spiritual Perfection as a Species
We walk this earth as bewildered animals trying to recover the divinity within — descendants of the great apes who invented gods to mirror back to us the best in ourselves and bridle the wors…
www.themarginalian.org
November 29, 2025 at 8:01 PM
How to be human – Kahlil Gibran's recipe for our spiritual perfection as a species, even more timely a century later www.themarginalian.org/2025/11/29/k...
The Third Thing – poet Donald Hall on the secret to lasting love www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/13/d...
The Third Thing: Poet Donald Hall on the Secret to Lasting Love
“Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 29, 2025 at 3:04 PM
The Third Thing – poet Donald Hall on the secret to lasting love www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/13/d...
An extraordinary invitation to reconsider what you believe you deserve in love www.themarginalian.org/2021/07/26/d...
The Truelove: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Reaching Beyond Our Limiting Beliefs About the Love We Deserve
“if you wanted to drown you could, but you don’t because finally after all this struggle and all these years you simply don’t want to any more, you’ve simply had enough of drowning and you wa…
www.themarginalian.org
November 29, 2025 at 2:28 PM
An extraordinary invitation to reconsider what you believe you deserve in love www.themarginalian.org/2021/07/26/d...
At the link, the best of The Marginalian this week in a single place – love against probability, gratitude as an act of courage and resistance in a broken world, the science and spirituality of fog: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
November 29, 2025 at 1:01 PM
At the link, the best of The Marginalian this week in a single place – love against probability, gratitude as an act of courage and resistance in a broken world, the science and spirituality of fog: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
This is priceless, whatever your gender: Ursula K. Le Guin on change, menopause as rebirth, and the civilizational value of elders www.themarginalian.org/2023/09/30/u...
Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders
“Into the space ship, Granny.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 29, 2025 at 5:47 AM
This is priceless, whatever your gender: Ursula K. Le Guin on change, menopause as rebirth, and the civilizational value of elders www.themarginalian.org/2023/09/30/u...
Revelatory read on music, the neural harmonics of emotion, and how love rewires the brain www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/04/g...
Music, the Neural Harmonics of Emotion, and How Love Recomposes the Brain
“Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 29, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Revelatory read on music, the neural harmonics of emotion, and how love rewires the brain www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/04/g...
Nothing taxes our capacity for forgiveness, and self-forgiveness, like time with family. This might help: www.themarginalian.org/2025/01/17/f...
Forgiveness
Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare, splendid poem “blessing the boats.” We had met at a poetry workshop and shared a reso…
www.themarginalian.org
November 29, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Nothing taxes our capacity for forgiveness, and self-forgiveness, like time with family. This might help: www.themarginalian.org/2025/01/17/f...
Still the best thing I've ever read about the art of growing older www.themarginalian.org/2015/09/03/g...
Grace Paley on the Art of Growing Older
“The main thing is this — when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 28, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Still the best thing I've ever read about the art of growing older www.themarginalian.org/2015/09/03/g...
"Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality."
An Iris Murdoch classic
An Iris Murdoch classic
November 28, 2025 at 8:21 PM
"Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality."
An Iris Murdoch classic
An Iris Murdoch classic
For an antidote to Black Friday, a lovely vintage illustrated poem about the art of enough www.themarginalian.org/2023/07/29/j...
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem About the Meaning and Measure of Enough
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happine…
www.themarginalian.org
November 28, 2025 at 5:57 PM
For an antidote to Black Friday, a lovely vintage illustrated poem about the art of enough www.themarginalian.org/2023/07/29/j...
The bittersweet story of the real-life peaceful bull who inspired one of the most beloved children's books of all time www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/09/f...
The Bittersweet Story of the Real-Life Peaceful Bull Who Inspired Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s Ferdinand
A journey to the abyss between the real world and the ideal world, and a romp across our mightiest bridge between the two.
www.themarginalian.org
November 28, 2025 at 2:28 PM
The bittersweet story of the real-life peaceful bull who inspired one of the most beloved children's books of all time www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/09/f...