Maria Popova

The great Polish-American mathematician (August 3, 1914–October 26, 1984) possessed one of the most dazzling minds of the twentieth century.

This is our paradox: We know that uncertainty is , is the crucible of creativity , is the path to truth , and yet we spend our lives searching for certainty.

No one will map for you the path by which you must cross the wilderness of your own life — not your parents or your teachers, not your heroes or your lovers, not the self-help books or Shakespeare's sonnets. Some may give you signposts, some may become turning points, but it is a path you ultimately make by walking. Along the way, you mistake dreams and desires for destinations, only to find that they have been way-stations — as soon as you attain them, you begin longing for something else. This Möbius strip of longing is the root of everything we suffer in the fangs of

“God is Change,” Octavia Butler , channeling in poetic truth the fundamental scientific fact of the universe

After twenty years of making immaterial things with my mind — ideas sculpted of words, questions woven of sentences, translucent vessels for thought and feeling in the shape of poems — I found myself overcome by the urge to make things with my hands out of matter: clay, thread, stone, resin, wood, lichen.

When Donald Trump waived congressionally approved sanctions on Russia, announced a deal to buy Russian diesel, and returned to his invective against Ukrainian

Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934–December 20, 1996) was many things — a voracious reader hopeless romantic , and brilliant philosopher . But above

It is a beautiful dream, that there is something out there to instruct you how to live — a secret handed down by your parents or your teachers, a system like liberal arts education or cognitive behavioral therapy, a slogan held up by your heroes declaring the answer to the bottomless question of why you are here.

In early September 1948, a year after she rewilded the landscape of literature with Margaret Wise Brown watched the love of her life fade to black.

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time,” E.B. White insisted . “You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.”