Quote

Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida

Susan Orlean

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Susan Orlean
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 31
Journalist
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Think
Thinking
Florida
Figured
Universe
Order
Find
Sometimes

More quotes by Susan Orlean

Image
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
Image
If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger?
Susan Orlean
Image
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
Image
States should pass laws making it illegal to own or trade wild animals the phony 'educational' permits that many private owners have used to skirt those laws should be eliminated.
Susan Orlean
Image
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
Image
I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus.
Susan Orlean
Image
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
Image
Now we're e-mailing and tweeting and texting so much, a phone call comes as a fresh surprise. I get text messages on my cell phone all day long, and it warbles to alert me that someone has sent me a message on Facebook or a reply or direct message on Twitter, but it rarely ever rings.
Susan Orlean
Image
Writing about fashion forces you to overcome the nagging feeling that fashion doesn't matter, that it's trivial or fleeting. I just look at it anthropologically, which is different from the way I'd write about art.
Susan Orlean
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The one thing I've discovered about social media is that people love answering questions. In fact, it sometimes feels like at any given moment, millions of people are online who have been waiting for exactly the question you fire off.
Susan Orlean
Image
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.
Susan Orlean
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Susan Orlean
Image
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
Image
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