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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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Susan Orlean
Age: 68
Born: 1955
Born: October 31
Journalist
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Worth
Writer
Seemingly
Fun
Convincing
Part
Unusual
Time
Subject
Love
Ordinary
Subjects
Reader

More quotes by Susan Orlean

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The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.
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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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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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.
Susan Orlean
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When I was a kid, phone calls were a premium commodity only the very coolest kids had a phone line of their own, and long-distance phone calls were made after eleven, when the rates went down, unless you were flamboyant with your spending. Then phone calls became as cheap as dirt and as constant as rain, and I was on the phone all the time.
Susan Orlean
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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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I've always been afraid of video games - not afraid that I wouldn't like them, but that I would like them too much, and that after mere seconds in front of any particularly bright and absorbing game, I would abandon all ambition, turn into a mouth-breathing zombie, and develop a wide, sofa-shaped rear end.
Susan Orlean
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Oversized houses, like oversized cars, seem to be a particularly American fixation.
Susan Orlean
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I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.
Susan Orlean
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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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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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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
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I am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to aspiring writers has passed its sell-by date.
Susan Orlean
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I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.
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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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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I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.
Susan Orlean
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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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When it comes to consumer electronics, I'm a big fat sucker, because even though I know you should never, ever buy anything until the second version of it is released, I just can't resist. I live in a state of perpetual Beta.
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