Quote

There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

Susan Orlean

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Susan Orlean
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 31
Journalist
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Sentence
Sentences
Sounds
Exactly
Sound
Tweak
Comes
Mastery
Sense
Writing
Marvelous

More quotes by Susan Orlean

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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.
Susan Orlean
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I would argue that it might be easier to endure loneliness than to endure the idea that you might disappear.
Susan Orlean
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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.
Susan Orlean
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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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When we stopped to rest and Tony tried to figure out what was wrong with his compass, I asked him what he thought it was about orchids that seduced humans so completely that they were compelled to steal them and worship them and try to breed new and specific kinds of them and then be willing to wait for nearly a decade for one of them to flower.
Susan Orlean
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We do a lot of bird-watching up in the country, but we almost never have a chance to people-watch. There simply aren't enough human beings up here: there is nowhere you can park yourself with a cup of coffee and observe the species on parade.
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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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 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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I'm happy to be reminded that an ordinary day full of nothing but nothingness can make you feel like you've won the lottery.
Susan Orlean
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Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.
Susan Orlean
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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?
Susan Orlean
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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.
Susan Orlean
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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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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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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
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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.'
Susan Orlean
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Recently, I have come to assume that any call to my landline is from a telemarketer or an automated call from Terminex, letting me know that our regularly scheduled pest-extermination service will occur on its regular schedule. So I usually ignore my home phone.
Susan Orlean
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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
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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