Quote

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

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Susan Orlean
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 31
Journalist
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Tree
Unbelievably
Probably
Jewelry
Given
Badly
Would
Satisfying
Think
Birthday
Thinking
Asked
Cutting
Instead
Chainsaw

More quotes by Susan Orlean

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Writers like to write, and writing in different forms - short, long, bite-sized, done on the fly, done with painstaking attention - all interest me.
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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.
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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.
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I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.
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When I was a kid, phone calls were a premium commodity only the very coolest kids had a phone line of their own, and long-distance phone calls were made after eleven, when the rates went down, unless you were flamboyant with your spending. Then phone calls became as cheap as dirt and as constant as rain, and I was on the phone all the time.
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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.
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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?
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One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.
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The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.
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If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger?
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Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think part of a hero construct is overcoming loss, or being abandoned, or having to make your own way in the world.
Susan Orlean
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I remember three- and four-week-long snow days, and drifts so deep a small child, namely me, could get lost in them. No such winter exists in the record, but that's how Ohio winters seemed to me when I was little - silent, silver, endless, and dreamy.
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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.
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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.'
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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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Sense of smell, of course, is only one of those dog qualities that can't be replicated or improved upon. I've been researching dogs in warfare for my book about 'Rin Tin Tin,' and I've read many accounts of their heroics: carrying messages through battle, alerting troops to enemy planes, and even parachuting behind enemy lines.
Susan Orlean