Susan Orlean quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Susan Orlean

Top Susan Orlean Quotes

Browse top 34 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Susan Orlean.

Favorite Susan Orlean Quotes

1. "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

2. "Human relationships used to be easy: you had friends, boy- or girlfriends, parents, children, and landlords. Now, thanks to social media, it's all gone sideways." ~ Susan Orlean

3. "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

4. "I am unusually Halloween-attentive, because, as it happens, I was born on Halloween, so for me it has always been an occasion of great moment." ~ Susan Orlean

5. "The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility." ~ Susan Orlean

6. "I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately." ~ Susan Orlean

7. "An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain." ~ Susan Orlean

8. "I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes." ~ Susan Orlean

9. "If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger?" ~ Susan Orlean

10. "I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life- some proof that everything in its way mattered, that working hard mattered, that feeling things mattered, that even sadness and loss mattered, because it was all part of something that would live on. But I had also come to recognize that not everything needs to be durable. the lesson we have yet to learn from dogs, that could sustain us, is that having no apprehension of the past or future is not limiting but liberating. Rin Tin Tin did not need to be remembered in order to be happy; for him, it was always enough to have that instant when the sun was soft, when the ball was tossed and caught, when the beloved rubber doll was squeaked. Such a moment was complete in itself, pure and sufficient." ~ Susan Orlean

11. "The old orchid hunter lay back on his pillow, his body limp... 'You'll curse the insects,' he said at least, 'and you'll curse the natives... The sun will burn you by day and the cold will shrivel you by night. You'll be racked by fever and tormented by a hundred discomforts, but you'll go on. For when a man falls in love with orchids, he'll do anything to possess the one he wants. It's like chasing a green-eyed woman or taking cocaine... it's a sort of madness..." ~ Susan Orlean

12. "Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation." ~ Susan Orlean

13. "If only feelings and ideas and stories and history really could be contained in a block of marble—if only there could be a gathering up of permanence—how reassuring it would be, how comforting to think that something you loved could be held in place, moored and everlasting, rather than bobbing along on the slippery sea of reminiscence, where it could always drift out of reach." ~ Susan Orlean

14. "I passed so many vacant acres and looked past them to so many more vacant acres and looked ahead and behind at the empty road and up at the empty sky; the sheer bigness of the world made me feel lonely to the bone. The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility. If I had been an orchid hunter I wouldn't have seen this space as sad-making and vacant - I think I would have seen it as acres of opportunity where the things I loved were waiting to be found." ~ Susan Orlean

15. "More and more, I felt that I was meeting people like Lee who didn't at all seem part of this modern world and this moment in time - the world of petty aggravations and obligations and boundaries, a time of bored cynicism - because how they lived and what they lived for was so optimistic. They sincerely loved something, trusted in the perfectibility of some living thing, lived for a myth about themselves and the idea of adventure, were convinced that certain things were really worth dying for, believed that they could make their lives into whatever they dreamed." ~ Susan Orlean

16. "Now I was also trying to understand how someone could end such intense desire without leaving a trace. If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger? A couple of houseplants? A dinky Home Depot Phalaenopsis in a coffee can? I personally have always found giving up on something a thousand times harder than getting it started, but evidently Laroche's finishes were downright and absolute, and what's more, he also shut off any chance of amends." ~ Susan Orlean

17. "I never thought very many people in the world were very much like John Laroche, but I realized more and more that he was only an extreme, not an aberration - that most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life." ~ Susan Orlean

18. "Country living—and definitely living in the country with a lot of animals—isn't peaceful. It's full of blood and guts and murder and rivalry and treachery and chaos, in a lovely green pitiless world." ~ Susan Orlean

19. "The art critic and philosopher John Berger once said that we like to look at animals because it reminds us of the past and the agrarian life that included the regular presence of animals." ~ Susan Orlean

20. "One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day." ~ Susan Orlean

21. "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

22. "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

23. "A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder." ~ Susan Orlean

24. "Dogs really are perfect soldiers. They are brave and smart; they can smell through walls, see in the dark, and eat Army rations without complaint." ~ Susan Orlean

25. "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

26. "I love tearing things out of the ground. I love digging and discarding. I love pruning. In fact, I love pruning so much that I once gave myself carpal-tunnel syndrome because I attacked a trumpet vine with so much dedication." ~ Susan Orlean

27. "Every corny thing that's said about living with nature - being in harmony with the earth, feeling the cycle of the seasons - happens to be true." ~ Susan Orlean

28. "The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along." ~ Susan Orlean

29. "Writers like to write, and writing in different forms - short, long, bite-sized, done on the fly, done with painstaking attention - all interest me." ~ Susan Orlean

30. "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

31. "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

32. "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

33. "Dog parks are more cliquish than any other human gathering with the possible exception of seventh grade. Deal with it." ~ Susan Orlean

34. "Most writing doesn't take place on the page; it takes place in your head." ~ Susan Orlean

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It just broke my heart, and I had to get away from it. I love them to death, but they know how bad it got. It's not their fault, but I couldn't do that any longer."
Author: Brian Welch

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