Inspiration Desk articles

  • Two Faces in the Same Glass

    Two Faces in the Same Glass

    On Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror and the quiet distance between the self we live in and the self we see.

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  • The Girl Who Moved Things With Her Mind

    The Girl Who Moved Things With Her Mind

    On Roald Dahl's Matilda and the quiet power of children who refuse to accept the world as it is given to them.

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  • The Sled We All Leave Behind

    The Sled We All Leave Behind

    On Citizen Kane, the rooms wealth cannot warm, and the small word that holds a whole life.

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  • The Field That Refuses to Be Crossed

    The Field That Refuses to Be Crossed

    On Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World and the quiet geography of wanting something you cannot easily reach.

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  • The Grumpy Neighbor and the Shape of Love

    The Grumpy Neighbor and the Shape of Love

    On Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove and the hidden tenderness inside those who seem impossible to love.

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  • The Reel of Forbidden Kisses

    The Reel of Forbidden Kisses

    On Cinema Paradiso and the way love, loss, and memory splice themselves into the people we become.

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  • The Art of Letting Go of the Ground

    The Art of Letting Go of the Ground

    Fragonard's The Swing captures a moment of weightlessness that asks us something uncomfortable about how we live.

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  • The Treasure Beneath Your Feet

    The Treasure Beneath Your Feet

    How Paulo Coelho's repeated failures led to a story about finding what was always there, and what that means for all of us.

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  • What Burns When We Look

    What Burns When We Look

    How the act of truly seeing another person becomes the most radical form of love we can offer.

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  • The Mirror in the Room

    The Mirror in the Room

    How a 15th-century portrait of two people standing in a quiet room reveals what we all risk when we say 'I promise.'

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