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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.

Susan Orlean

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

More quotes by Susan Orlean

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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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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.
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I didn't want to talk, and I didn't think dogs could solve my problems. But they were so uncritical and un-judgmental. Sometimes when you're really blue, you don't want to talk, but you want that sense of companionship. I certainly enjoy that with my beasts.
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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 work at home, in the country, and days will go by when, except for my husband and son and the occasional UPS man, the only sentient creatures that see me are my chickens and turkeys.
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You have to appreciate the spiritual component of having an opportunity to do something as wondrous as writing. You should be practical and smart and you should have a good agent and you should work really, really hard. But you should also be filled with awe and gratitude about this amazing way to be in the world.
Susan Orlean
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I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.
Susan Orlean
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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
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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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A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.
Susan Orlean
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I've loved some gadgets that were not worthy, and I've loved gadgets that I would have loved more if I had waited for their developers to figure out how to really make them work, but I loved them anyway.
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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Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.
Susan Orlean
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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.
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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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
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Being a good designer certainly doesn't guarantee that you're good at business. It's probably more surprising when the two talents coexist in one person.
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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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
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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?
Susan Orlean