Susan Orlean Quotes

#1. The iPhone calendar isn't bad, but it isn't great, either. It only offers a day view and a month view - it doesn't have a week view, which drives me crazy.

Susan Orlean

#2. Buying a car used to be an experience so soul-scorching, so confidence-splattering, so existentially rattling that an entire car company was based on the promise that you wouldn't have to come in contact with it.

Susan Orlean

#3. I'm very excited about my new Spotify account, which gives me access to twenty gazillion songs any time, all the time. The day I opened my account, though, I sat there perplexed. How would I figure out what I wanted to hear?

Susan Orlean

#4. Every single one of my books had its title changed almost as we were going to press, for all sorts of different reasons.

Susan Orlean

#5. I want to let my friend Buster know that I would like to have dinner with him tonight. Does Buster work at home? Then how likely is he to have his cell phone on? Is he one of those people who only turns on his cell when he's in his car? I hate that.

Susan Orlean

#6. Borders had lousy management and made bad corporate decisions, so its fate is less like a terrible accident than a slow-motion slide into a ditch, but it's hard to be happy about a bookseller's demise.

Susan Orlean

#7. The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.

Susan Orlean

#8. Keeping animals, I have learned, is all about water. Who even knew chickens drank water? I didn't, but they do, and a lot.

Susan Orlean

#9. I'm happy to be reminded that an ordinary day full of nothing but nothingness can make you feel like you've won the lottery.

Susan Orlean

#10. Who on earth is going to use 'utilize' in a text message, a whopping seven characters including the always-hard-to-type 'z,' when you can say the exact same thing in three characters? I can't think of a sentence in which 'use' can't replace 'utilize.'

Susan Orlean

#11. The fact that dogs are not people means you don't have as much response to the particulars.

Susan Orlean

#12. Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.

Susan Orlean

#13. Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.

Susan Orlean

#14. I finally overcame my phobia, and now I approach flying with a sort of studied boredom - a learned habit, thanks to my learn-to-fly-calmly training - but like all former flying phobics, I retain a weird and feverish fascination with aviation news, especially bad news.

Susan Orlean

#15. My ace in the hole as a human being used to be my capacity for remembering birthdays. I worked at it. Whenever I made a new friend, I made a point of finding out his or her birthday early on, and I would record it in my Filofax calendar.

Susan Orlean

#16. Parents, it seems, have an almost Olympian persistence when it comes to suggesting more secure and lucrative lines of work for their children who have the notion that writing is an actual profession. I say this from experience.

Susan Orlean

#17. You could go crazy thinking of how unprivate our lives really are - the omnipresent security cameras, the tracking data on our very smart phones, the porous state of our Internet selves, the trail of electronic crumbs we leave every day.

Susan Orlean

#18. I want a chainsaw very badly, because I think cutting down a tree would be unbelievably satisfying. I have asked for a chainsaw for my birthday, but I think I'll probably be given jewelry instead.

Susan Orlean

#19. I remember thinking that a girdle was barbaric, and that never in a million years would I treat myself like a sleeping bag being shoved into a stuff sack. Never! Instead, I would run marathons and work out and be in perfect shape and reject the tyranny of the girdle forever.

Susan Orlean

#20. I wish I had coined the phrase 'tyranny of choice,' but someone beat me to it. The counterintuitive truth is that have an abundance of options does not make you feel privileged and indulged; too many options make you feel like all of them are wrong, and that you are wrong if you choose any of them.

Susan Orlean

#21. There is nothing more melancholy than empty festive places.

Susan Orlean

#22. Election Day outside of big cities is different. For one thing, there are so few people in my town that each individual vote really does matter, and several local races have been decided by as many votes as you can count on one hand.

Susan Orlean

#23. The lesson we have yet to learn from dogs, that could sustain us, is that having no apprehension of the past or future is not limiting but liberating.

Susan Orlean

#24. I am unusually Halloween-attentive, because, as it happens, I was born on Halloween, so for me it has always been an occasion of great moment.

Susan Orlean

#25. I might have missed my calling as an editor. In the spring, the sight of my empty garden beds gives me the horticultural equivalent of writers' block: So much space! So many plants to choose among, and yet none of them seem quite right!

Susan Orlean

#26. I heard a computer scientist the other day refer to playing with the Kinect as 'storytelling.' At first I thought that sounded a little high-minded, but after trying a few games I could see what she meant.

Susan Orlean

#27. I didn't want to talk, and I didn't think dogs could solve my problems. But they were so uncritical and un-judgmental. Sometimes when you're really blue, you don't want to talk, but you want that sense of companionship. I certainly enjoy that with my beasts.

Susan Orlean

#28. I have no idea how to get in touch with anyone anymore. Everyone, it seems, has a home phone, a cell phone, a regular e-mail account, a Facebook account, a Twitter account, and a Web site. Some of them also have a Google Voice number. There are the sentimental few who still have fax machines.

Susan Orlean

#29. I've definitely taken a lot of consolation from animals in my life. There have been times when I've been really sad, and they gave solace and comfort and companionability more than a person.

Susan Orlean

#30. I would argue that it might be easier to endure loneliness than to endure the idea that you might disappear.

Susan Orlean

#31. Winter in the country is very white. There is black grit on all the shoulders of the roads and on the big mounds from the plows, and all the cars are filthy, but the fields are dazzling and untouched and pristine.

Susan Orlean

#32. The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along.

Susan Orlean

#33. There are cultures that believe having your photograph taken steals your soul. I don't think there is a stolen soul in a picture, but still - why is it so hard to throw them away?

Susan Orlean

#34. Everything rational and sensible abandons me when I try to throw out photographs. Time and time again, I hold one over a wastebasket, and then find it impossible to release my fingers and let the picture drop and disappear.

Susan Orlean

#35. Like writing, running is so much about mind over matter. There are times when you have to override the discomfort and keep pushing. That capacity to endure and then prevail is just amazing.

Susan Orlean

#36. In an interesting inversion of status, the reigning breed in the dog park these days is the really-oddball-unidentifiable-mixed-breed-mutt-found-wandering-the-street or its equivalent. The stranger the mutt the better; the more peculiar the circumstance of it coming into your life, the better.

Susan Orlean

#37. I was never any good at remembering dates, but now I hardly have to. When the first bulb catalogs get delivered and the hens start laying again, that's all the notice I'll need to know that winter has passed.

Susan Orlean

#38. I love tearing things out of the ground. I love digging and discarding. I love pruning. In fact, I love pruning so much that I once gave myself carpal-tunnel syndrome because I attacked a trumpet vine with so much dedication.

Susan Orlean

#39. You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

Susan Orlean

#40. Every corny thing that's said about living with nature - being in harmony with the earth, feeling the cycle of the seasons - happens to be true.

Susan Orlean

#41. It's human nature to set a point in our minds when we feel triumphant and to measure everything that comes after it by how far we fall or rise from that point.

Susan Orlean

#42. I had never considered using a hashtag anywhere other than on Twitter, but now I'm inspired. Text messages have always seemed a little flat to me, so the murmuring Greek chorus of a hashtag might be a perfect way to liven them up and give them a bit of dimension.

Susan Orlean

#43. I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.

Susan Orlean

#44. To my great surprise, Twitter is not housed in a silver pod that orbits Earth at supersonic speeds, vacuuming up and then dispersing digital bits of worldwide chitchat; it's in a big, bland office building in downtown San Francisco, near a bowling alley and an Old Navy.

Susan Orlean

#45. Being a good designer certainly doesn't guarantee that you're good at business. It's probably more surprising when the two talents coexist in one person.

Susan Orlean

#46. Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that.

Susan Orlean

#47. Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

Susan Orlean

#48. I went to a football school, which meant that I went to a university that served up education and was simultaneously operating a sports franchise.

Susan Orlean

#49. Writers like to write, and writing in different forms - short, long, bite-sized, done on the fly, done with painstaking attention - all interest me.

Susan Orlean

#50. When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian corn on the front stoop; there was nothing electric, nothing inflatable, nothing with latex membranes or strobes.

Susan Orlean

#51. I've loved some gadgets that were not worthy, and I've loved gadgets that I would have loved more if I had waited for their developers to figure out how to really make them work, but I loved them anyway.

Susan Orlean

#52. Writing about someone well known removes that obligation of defending it as a subject, but it also means that some of the surprise and freshness is already gone. It's so different - in some ways much harder for me.

Susan Orlean

#53. In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod, I have found myself wandering the musical hallways of my past and reacquainting myself with music I haven't listened to in years.

Susan Orlean

#54. I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.

Susan Orlean

#55. I remember, when I was a kid, watching my mother jam herself into her girdle - a piece of equipment so rigid it could stand up on its own - and I remember her coming home from fancy parties and racing upstairs to extricate herself from its cruel iron grip.

Susan Orlean

#56. When I wonder what the future of books will be, I often think about horses. Before automobiles existed, everyone had a horse. Then cars became available, and their convenience, compared to horses, was undeniable.

Susan Orlean

#57. I don't care that much about rote memorization. An old boyfriend of mine used to get into lacerating arguments with his parents over facts, and I used to watch on in mute astonishment. How could anyone actually argue about something that could be looked up?

Susan Orlean

#58. One of my favorite activities as a teen-ager was to watch television over the phone with my best friend.

Susan Orlean

#59. One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.

Susan Orlean

#60. I think the responsibility of running a huge business, which happens if you become a successful designer, probably makes you more careful.

Susan Orlean

#61. I have worked on PCs and on Macs and, while I have my preferences, I don't find it crippling to work on one rather than the other.

Susan Orlean

#62. Sometimes, the Internet can feel like a middle-school playground populated by brats in ski masks who name-call and taunt with the fake bravery of the anonymous. But sometimes - thank goodness - it's nicer than real life.

Susan Orlean

#63. Human relationships used to be easy: you had friends, boy- or girlfriends, parents, children, and landlords. Now, thanks to social media, it's all gone sideways.

Susan Orlean

#64. I wonder what book signings will be like when most of the books we read are electronic. Will authors sign something else? A flyer, perhaps? A special kind of card devised for the purpose?

Susan Orlean

#65. Having animals in the city is entirely different from having animals out in the country. For one thing, it's more social. When you live on lots of acres without neighbors within a stone's throw, your dog-walks are usually solitary rambles over hill and dale.

Susan Orlean

#66. I am of mixed minds about the issue of privacy. On one hand, I understand that information is power, and power is, well, power, so keeping your private information to yourself is essential - especially if you are a controversial figure, a celebrity, or a dissident.

Susan Orlean

#67. I feel somewhat responsible for the Borders Books bankruptcy.

Susan Orlean

#68. I love convincing a reader that an unusual or seemingly ordinary subject is worth his or her time - it's part of the fun for me as a writer.

Susan Orlean

#69. We do a lot of bird-watching up in the country, but we almost never have a chance to people-watch. There simply aren't enough human beings up here: there is nowhere you can park yourself with a cup of coffee and observe the species on parade.

Susan Orlean

#70. I think on a day-to-day basis, what attracts us in coexisting with another living, evolving thing, is that you have a relationship that's different than with a piece of furniture. We experience the cycle of life through these other beings.

Susan Orlean

#71. I've tried a lot of different apps to manage Twitter on my phone (I use Hootsuite on my laptop), but I think the official Twitter app is really good.

Susan Orlean

#72. I approach stories as a private educational enterprise: I want to learn about something. I teach myself through research, reporting, and thinking, and then, when I feel like I know the story, I tell it to readers.

Susan Orlean

#73. When it comes to consumer electronics, I'm a big fat sucker, because even though I know you should never, ever buy anything until the second version of it is released, I just can't resist. I live in a state of perpetual Beta.

Susan Orlean

#74. I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus.

Susan Orlean

#75. An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain.

Susan Orlean

#76. I would like to make sleeping my new hobby, except that I'm too tired, really, to have a hobby. But a girl can always dream.

Susan Orlean

#77. A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.

Susan Orlean

#78. There will always be vain, obsessive people who want to own rare and extraordinary things whatever the cost; there will always be people for whom owning beautiful, dangerous animals brings a sense of power and magic.

Susan Orlean

#79. Among all life forms, there are creatures with charisma and creatures without. It's one of those ineffable qualities we can't quite define, but we all seem to respond similarly to.

Susan Orlean

#80. Sometimes I'm dazzled by how modern and fabulous we are, and how easy everything can be for us; that's the gilded glow of technology, and I marvel at it all the time.

Susan Orlean

#81. Writing about unknown people means I spend a lot of time arguing to the reader about why it's worth knowing about them. That's challenging, but then the piece is pure discovery.

Susan Orlean

#82. Country living - and definitely living in the country with a lot of animals - isn't peaceful. It's full of blood and guts and murder and rivalry and treachery and chaos, in a lovely green pitiless world.

Susan Orlean

#83. Now we're e-mailing and tweeting and texting so much, a phone call comes as a fresh surprise. I get text messages on my cell phone all day long, and it warbles to alert me that someone has sent me a message on Facebook or a reply or direct message on Twitter, but it rarely ever rings.

Susan Orlean

#84. States should pass laws making it illegal to own or trade wild animals; the phony 'educational' permits that many private owners have used to skirt those laws should be eliminated.

Susan Orlean

#85. I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

Susan Orlean

#86. When my son was born, and after a day of lying-in I was told that I could leave the hospital and take him home, I burst into tears. It wasn't the emotion of the moment: it was shock and horror.

Susan Orlean

#87. Knowledge is a beautiful thing, but there are a few things I wish I didn't know.

Susan Orlean

#88. It seems that half the point of being in Miami Beach - particularly the northern end of South Beach - is to be observed by people-watchers like me, and the display along Ocean Drive during my visit was, as always, sublime.

Susan Orlean

#89. We're fascinated by animals because it's almost like having Martians living among us. We can see some familiarity in them, but they're entirely different creatures.

Susan Orlean

#90. Recently, I have come to assume that any call to my landline is from a telemarketer or an automated call from Terminex, letting me know that our regularly scheduled pest-extermination service will occur on its regular schedule. So I usually ignore my home phone.

Susan Orlean

#91. Dog parks are more cliquish than any other human gathering with the possible exception of seventh grade. Deal with it.

Susan Orlean

#92. Writing about fashion forces you to overcome the nagging feeling that fashion doesn't "matter", that it's trivial or fleeting. I just look at it anthropologically, which is different from the way I'd write about art.

Susan Orlean

#93. Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida

Susan Orlean

#94. I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.

Susan Orlean

#95. I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.

Susan Orlean

#96. When you're researching you're learning. When you're writing, you're teaching.

Susan Orlean

#97. Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

Susan Orlean

#98. Here's a habit I never thought I'd develop: I gravitate to anything online that's marked 'most popular' or 'most e-mailed.' And I hate myself a little bit every time I do.

Susan Orlean

#99. It is hard to imagine Thomas Kinkade as anything less than supremely self-assured.

Susan Orlean

#100. There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

Susan Orlean