Top 100 Orlean Quotes
#1. 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
#2. One of my favorite activities as a teen-ager was to watch television over the phone with my best friend.
Susan Orlean
#3. 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
#4. There was a time when I kept track of it all; when my mind worked like a giant lint brush being swept over the fuzzy surface of popular culture. But these days, pop culture seems to have gotten fuzzier and fuzzier; notoriety comes and goes in the snap of a finger.
Susan Orlean
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.
Susan Orlean
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. The thing is, I have a zillion apps, and I'm always looking for the perfect arrangement for them, so scrambling my home screen is part of that eternal quest.
Susan Orlean
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.
Susan Orlean
#15. Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.
Susan Orlean
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story.
Susan Orlean
#19. 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
#20. I can imagine a future in which real books will exist but in a more limited, particular way.
Susan Orlean
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.
Susan Orlean
#26. 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
#27. On the very same day that I ordered an iPad 2, I went shopping to buy myself a letter opener. I like to cover all my bases.
Susan Orlean
#28. Oversized houses, like oversized cars, seem to be a particularly American fixation.
Susan Orlean
#29. In my perfect world, we would establish perhaps four national zoos of unimpeachable quality and close the rest of them.
Susan Orlean
#30. I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus.
Susan Orlean
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. I feel somewhat responsible for the Borders Books bankruptcy.
Susan Orlean
#39. 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
#40. Dogs really are perfect soldiers. They are brave and smart; they can smell through walls, see in the dark, and eat Army rations without complaint.
Susan Orlean
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. I love Japanese design and fabrics. I also love people who make clothes for mass consumption but do it well and cleverly.
Susan Orlean
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. I once had a boyfriend who couldn't write unless he was wearing a necktie and a dress shirt, which I thought was really weird, because this was a long time ago, and no one I knew ever wore dress shirts, let alone neckties; it was like he was a grown-up reenacter or something.
Susan Orlean
#48. My inspiration is really very simple: I'm struck by things that I want to know more about. I really do react just as a curious person: who is this person? What's the story behind this situation? Why do people like this or dislike this thing?
Susan Orlean
#49. I rarely listen to commercial radio, and when I do, I'm shocked by how many ads there are, and how annoying they are, and how bad the radio station usually is.
Susan Orlean
#50. I think the responsibility of running a huge business, which happens if you become a successful designer, probably makes you more careful.
Susan Orlean
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. Unlimited choice is paralyzing. The Internet has made this form of paralysis due to option overload a standard feature of comfortable modern life.
Susan Orlean
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.
Susan Orlean
#59. 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
#60. The fact that dogs are not people means you don't have as much response to the particulars.
Susan Orlean
#61. 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
#62. I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.
Susan Orlean
#63. Why, I wonder, should the popularity of a news story matter to me? Does it mean it's a good story or just a seductive one?
Susan Orlean
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.
Susan Orlean
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing.
Susan Orlean
#70. 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
#71. You can find out anything you want about a car now, and especially every bit of information about the price, without relying on the dealers.
Susan Orlean
#72. 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
#73. I had forgotten how thrilling a snow day is until my son started school, and as much as he loves it, he swoons at the idea of a free day arriving unexpectedly, laid out like a gift.
Susan Orlean
#74. I'm always mystified by the day-to-day workings of entities like Twitter that provide framework but not content, but I suppose it could be compared to the U.S. Postal Service, which manages to keep a lot of people employed doing lots of stuff other than writing letters.
Susan Orlean
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. College athletics are so entrenched and enjoyed by so many people that they will never be discontinued or substantially changed. I know that. I just pity the people caught in that tender trap. And most of all, I pity those kids.
Susan Orlean
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. Most writing doesn't take place on the page; it takes place in your head.
Susan Orlean
#86. I would argue that it might be easier to endure loneliness than to endure the idea that you might disappear.
Susan Orlean
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I'm tired. I have been tired for decades. I am tired in the morning and I am tired while becalmed in the slough of the afternoon, and I am tired in the evening, except right when I try to go to sleep.
Susan Orlean
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. There is nothing more melancholy than empty festive places.
Susan Orlean
#97. 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
#98. I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it.
Susan Orlean
#99. 'Brave' is one of those words that has been bleached of most of its meaning these days, thanks to far too many appearances in the glaring light of ad slogans and corporate public relations. I never thought about anything as brave anymore; it just seemed like a flabby, glib cliche.
Susan Orlean
#100. What's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is something that had been mostly absent from my life since junior high. In fact, the hallmark of life after junior high seemed to be the shedding of popularity as a central concern.
Susan Orlean
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