Natalie Audelo

Measuring from zero helps us keep perspective. I’ve often recommended a similar exercise, but in this version you make your friends disappear instead. You might know it already: when you’re with a loved one, imagine that they’re gone from your life and you’re not actually seeing them in the room with you, you’re just remembering what it was like... See more

This is, for many of us, the dream: unfettered commitment to externalizing our innards without concern for any gaze but our own. Reclaiming one’s time, you could say. But it requires nothing short of a battle.

she had the same bald enthusiasm for life

“Nothing is permanent,” she says. “So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.” She considers. “But I’ve also learned there’s no... See more

Morrison’s novels are all motivated by an idea: some complex knotty inquiry that she could work through in the space of a novel. As Morrison described it, the idea for Beloved began when she read a newspaper article about Margaret Garner—a 19th-century woman who fled slavery with her children. Facing capture, Garner killed one of her children and... See more