'A word after a word after a word is power.'

'In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.'

- Isaac Asimov

'There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.'

- Writer Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

'When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.'

- Author Jacqueline Susann (1918-1974)

'For it would seem—her case proved it—that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.'

- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in "Orlando: A Biography"

'I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.'

- Actress and singer Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

'I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.'

- American novelist Eudora Welty (1909-2001)

'Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without the words—and never stops at all.'

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

'In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.'

-Poet Robert Frost (1874-1963)

'The true measure of all our actions is how long the good in them lasts.'

- Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

'We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.'

- Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury

'Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.'

- Author Philip Roth (1933-2018)

'It's those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.'

- Author Malcolm Gladwell (1963 - present)

'Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.'

- Legendary author Jane Austen (1775 -1817)

'An idea is salvation by imagination.'

- US architect Frank Lloyd Wright

'If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.'

- Marine biologist and author Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

'The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.'

- Marine biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

'If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.'

- Activist Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

What it means to call something 'Orwellian'

The adjective often refers to anything that resembles the dystopian governments of George Orwell, usually a state like the one in "1984" that monitors its citizens to ensure compliance. But as this video essay from Noah Tavlin makes clear, the more precise definition is a society that redefines language to control thought.

'How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.' - Anne Frank

Orwell warned readers about how abuse of language can lead to dystopias

In his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," Orwell argues that language is the primary tool of political control and is "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." The essay warns readers that how they use and consume language will dictate what they permit—or prohibit—in society.

'The best way to make a dream come true is to wake up.'

- Fashion icon Anna Wintour (1949 – present)

'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.'

- Author Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

'Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.'

- Jane Addams (1860-1935)

'I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.'

- Comedian Joan Rivers (1933-2014)

'One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world'

- Activist and author Malala Yousafzai (1997-present)

A beginner's guide to Toni Morrison

The legendary American writer died in 2019, but her fiction is still as relevant as ever. This primer walks aspiring Morrison fans through her body of work, outlining the ideal starting point for several different kinds of readers. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Ten writers and thinkers on what growing older actually requires of us

The Marginalian's Maria Popova curates a collection arguing our culture has learned to dread aging while forgetting it is a privilege, and that the antidote is sustaining passions strong enough to keep us from turning inward. Voices include Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Didion, Pablo Casals, and Kahlil Gibran.

'At every moment, we always have a choice, even if it feels as if we don’t. Sometimes that choice may simply be to think a more positive thought.'

- Singer Tina Turner (1993–2023)

'Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.'

- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in "Elenora"

'The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.'

- Poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

'Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.'

- Suffragist Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

A linguist argues Jane Austen's language is what defines her fiction

While many readers love Austen's novels for their characters and their romantic plots, Chi Luu argues that many people (including literary luminaries like Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, and Ralph Waldo Emerson) underestimate how her adept wordplay, sense of irony, and memorable turns of phrase are what have made readers fall in love with her fiction for centuries.

A Quote by Sandra Day O'Connor

"Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time."

'No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.'

-Author Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Before Dawkins, other biologists proposed the power of mutating ideas

Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod proposed, “Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role.”

Toni Morrison's novels were popular postmodern texts

Toni Morrison’s novels broke new ground in American fiction by using bold structures and colloquial voices to reckon with the country’s past, developing her approach through classic early novels like “The Bluest Eye” and “Beloved,” all the way to later works like “Home.” Morrison once said, “The meaning of a novel is in its structure.”

A quote by Lauren Bacall

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."

Breaking down Anthropic's products and why their models are named after literary forms

Since March 2024, the Claude series of large language models includes three varieties—Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus—named to metaphorically illustrate increasing complexity and computing power. Claude Code can perform software engineering tasks for developers and, as of January 2026, writes nearly all of Anthropic's code alongside Opus 4.5.

A quote by Florence Nightingale

"Poetry and imagination begin life."

'Do one thing every day that scares you.'

-Mary Schmich (1953-present), a columnist for the Chicago Tribune

Why dystopian literature remains popular

Yale English professor Joe Cleary argues that dystopian literature’s continued relevance is due to a torrent of additional societal anxieties and that the streaming adaptations of dystopian classics "The Handmaid’s Tale" and "The Man in the High Castle" have expanded the genre’s popularity, introducing new audiences to its tropes.

'Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.'

- Maya Angelou

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

'All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.'

- "The Lord of the Rings" author JRR Tolkien (1892-1973)

Joan Didion's 1975 commencement speech at UCR encouraged graduates to think outside of themselves

Filled with many widely circulated quotes, the talk addresses people's tendency to focus only on their personal ideologies and perceptions of the world. Didion advocates for being an active participant in the world, rather than existing only in our own bubbles.

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.'

- Pablo Picasso

Jane Austen remains a literary force 250 years later

Both her books and adaptations of them for film continue to sell, with 2025 seeing the highest book sales since 2009. Critics claim her deep, witty exploration of relationships and social norms are the basis of her enduring relevance.

'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.'

- Albert Einstein

Ursula K. Le Guin worked to dismantle fantasy's clichés

The author is one of the genre’s most legendary names, constructing high fantasies like “The Earthsea Cycle” that detail intricate new worlds. In 2004, she delivered a lecture criticizing books and movies that rely on a simple formula: white characters, Medieval settings, and a battle between good and evil. “Whenever I find a fantasy that is set in a genuinely imagined society and culture instead of this lazy-minded, recycled hokum,” she said, “I feel like setting off fireworks.”

'Fear of life closes off more opportunities for us than fear of death ever does.'

- Actress Agnes Moorehead (1900–1974)