Quote

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

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Susan Orlean
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 31
Journalist
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Many
Choose
Calling
Editor
Giving
Seem
Writers
Equivalent
Much
Gives
None
Plants
Quite
Garden
Missed
Space
Sight
Editors
Seems
Spring
Block
Might
Empty
Bed
Right
Among
Plant
Beds

More quotes by Susan Orlean

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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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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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When I still lived in Manhattan, people-watching was my hobby, and I spent many Sunday afternoons eating up the scene from a window seat at a Starbucks on Broadway.
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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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The fact that dogs are not people means you don't have as much response to the particulars.
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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?
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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
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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.
Susan Orlean
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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.
Susan Orlean
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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.
Susan Orlean
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It is hard to imagine Thomas Kinkade as anything less than supremely self-assured.
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You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park, even after many, many hours spent there with them, and many hours of conversation. But if - knock on wood - anything should ever happen to your dog, these nameless non-strangers will rally, sympathize, offer to help, and hold your hand. I know this from experience.
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.
Susan Orlean
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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
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Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.
Susan Orlean