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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.

Susan Orlean

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Susan Orlean
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 31
Journalist
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Book
Twenty
Writing
Twenties
Even
Full
Years
Books
Time
Law
Published
Father
Urge
Three
Continued
School
Urges

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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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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.
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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!
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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 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.
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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.
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You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.
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Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.
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The fact that dogs are not people means you don't have as much response to the particulars.
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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 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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If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 think the responsibility of running a huge business, which happens if you become a successful designer, probably makes you more careful.
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I've noticed lately that it seems most intimate to not use any closing on your e-mail at all, because it seems to make it feel like you are engaged in an ongoing conversation - as if this one e-mail doesn't represent the beginning and end of the interaction but is just part of a perpetual loop of friendly back-and-forth.
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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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Dog parks are more cliquish than any other human gathering with the possible exception of seventh grade. Deal with it.
Susan Orlean