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: 68
Born: 1955
Born: October 31
Journalist
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Instead
Chainsaw
Tree
Unbelievably
Probably
Jewelry
Given
Badly
Would
Satisfying
Think
Birthday
Thinking
Asked
Cutting

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It is hard to imagine Thomas Kinkade as anything less than supremely self-assured.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.
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There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.
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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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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.
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