Susan Orlean quote: "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."

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approa...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Winter in the country is very white. There is black grit on all the shoulders of the roads and on th...
SUSAN ORLEAN

A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder...
SUSAN ORLEAN

To my great surprise, Twitter is not housed in a silver pod that orbits Earth at supersonic speeds, ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I want to let my friend Buster know that I would like to have dinner with him tonight. Does Buster w...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I wonder what book signings will be like when most of the books we read are electronic. Will authors...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Now we're e-mailing and tweeting and texting so much, a phone call comes as a fresh surprise. I ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I have no idea how to get in touch with anyone anymore. Everyone, it seems, has a home phone, a cell...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the partic...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Human relationships used to be easy: you had friends, boy- or girlfriends, parents, children, and la...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I want a chainsaw very badly, because I think cutting down a tree would be unbelievably satisfying. ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I was never any good at remembering dates, but now I hardly have to. When the first bulb catalogs ge...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I don't care that much about rote memorization. An old boyfriend of mine used to get into lacera...
SUSAN ORLEAN

When I wonder what the future of books will be, I often think about horses. Before automobiles exist...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Recently, I have come to assume that any call to my landline is from a telemarketer or an automated ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

When it comes to consumer electronics, I'm a big fat sucker, because even though I know you shou...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I remember thinking that a girdle was barbaric, and that never in a million years would I treat myse...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I finally overcame my phobia, and now I approach flying with a sort of studied boredom - a learned h...
SUSAN ORLEAN

My ace in the hole as a human being used to be my capacity for remembering birthdays. I worked at it...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Election Day outside of big cities is different. For one thing, there are so few people in my town t...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Sometimes, the Internet can feel like a middle-school playground populated by brats in ski masks who...
SUSAN ORLEAN

You could go crazy thinking of how unprivate our lives really are - the omnipresent security cameras...
SUSAN ORLEAN

You can find out anything you want about a car now, and especially every bit of information about th...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to aspiring writers has passed...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This i...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the gene...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Borders had lousy management and made bad corporate decisions, so its fate is less like a terrible a...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athlet...
SUSAN ORLEAN

When I was a kid, phone calls were a premium commodity; only the very coolest kids had a phone line ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I remember, when I was a kid, watching my mother jam herself into her girdle - a piece of equipment ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

There will always be vain, obsessive people who want to own rare and extraordinary things whatever t...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Sometimes I'm dazzled by how modern and fabulous we are, and how easy everything can be for us; ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

'Brave' is one of those words that has been bleached of most of its meaning these days, than...
SUSAN ORLEAN

There was a time when I kept track of it all; when my mind worked like a giant lint brush being swep...
SUSAN ORLEAN

The semiology and phenomenology of hashtaggery intrigues me. From what I understand, it all began ve...
SUSAN ORLEAN

In an interesting inversion of status, the reigning breed in the dog park these days is the really-o...
SUSAN ORLEAN

When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Parents, it seems, have an almost Olympian persistence when it comes to suggesting more secure and l...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Unlimited choice is paralyzing. The Internet has made this form of paralysis due to option overload ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Places like Hilton Head, with water adjacency and nice climates, are in high demand, and land values...
SUSAN ORLEAN

One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a sno...
SUSAN ORLEAN

The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I'm tired. I have be...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I had never considered using a hashtag anywhere other than on Twitter, but now I'm inspired. Tex...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life- some pr...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Why, I wonder, should the popularity of a news story matter to me? Does it mean it's a good stor...
SUSAN ORLEAN

On the very same day that I ordered an iPad 2, I went shopping to buy myself a letter opener. I like...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Buying a car used to be an experience so soul-scorching, so confidence-splattering, so existentially...
SUSAN ORLEAN

In my perfect world, we would establish perhaps four national zoos of unimpeachable quality and clos...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I'm very excited about my new Spotify account, which gives me access to twenty gazillion songs a...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I remember three- and four-week-long snow days, and drifts so deep a small child, namely me, could g...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Everything rational and sensible abandons me when I try to throw out photographs. Time and time agai...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I rarely listen to commercial radio, and when I do, I'm shocked by how many ads there are, and h...
SUSAN ORLEAN

You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park, even after many, many ...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Sense of smell, of course, is only one of those dog qualities that can't be replicated or improv...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I've always been afraid of video games - not afraid that I wouldn't like them, but that I wo...
SUSAN ORLEAN

What's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is so...
SUSAN ORLEAN

They will be given as gifts; books that are especially pretty or visual will be bought as hard copie...
SUSAN ORLEAN

In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod, I have found myself wandering the musical hallw...
SUSAN ORLEAN

I work at home, in the country, and days will go by when, except for my husband and son and the occa...
SUSAN ORLEAN

Hard work - I mean, does anybody use that term anymore? Laziness doesn't fly. It's all in th...
SUSAN POWTER

At the end of the day, both men and women who become CEOs have showed tenacity and hard work to succ...
SUSAN WOJCICKI

Coming out of the Louvre for the first time in 1971, dizzy with new love, I stood on Pont Neuf and m...
SUSAN VREELAND

My life is fair game for anybody. I spent an unhappy, penniless childhood in Brooklyn. I had to slug...
SUSAN HAYWARD

When I travel, I always take my Winsor & Newton watercolor kit, which is the size of a pack of c...
SUSAN MINOT

I've been married so long, I am on my third bottle of Tabasco sauce.
SUSAN VASS

A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considere...
SUSAN SONTAG

The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one; or both. Usually both.
SUSAN SONTAG

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write...
SUSAN SONTAG

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we...
SUSAN ERTZ

Soaring prescription drug costs have placed a tremendous strain on family budgets. They have also im...
SUSAN COLLINS

My own cabaret is constantly evolving with what is occurring in my own life, so motherhood is a natu...
SUSAN EGAN

One of the things I was hoping to do in the Secretary of the State's Office when I came was to p...
SUSAN BYSIEWICZ

The kids are Job One. So, to be quite candid, if they need me, I do my utmost to make sure I'm t...
SUSAN RICE

I can't begin to count how many times I have warned politicians and candidates to worry as much ...
SUSAN ESTRICH

My first novel, 'Compromising Positions,' was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island ...
SUSAN ISAACS

I try to live my life every day in the present, and try not to turn a blind eye to injustice and nee...
SUSAN SARANDON

I'll never throw away my blue jeans.
SUSAN FORD

So much of memory comes from the beginning of our lives when we know the world for the first time wi...
SUSAN SHREVE

Most people don't know who Ken Mehlman is. He's the chairman of the Republican Party, obviou...
SUSAN ESTRICH

We don't have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here.
SUSAN TAYLOR

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence. -Susan Sontag.
SUSAN SONTAG

A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated sp...
SUSAN SONTAG

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.
SUSAN SONTAG

It's a pleasure to share one's memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precio...
SUSAN SONTAG

After one hundred days of confinement following a bone marrow transplant, I rejoiced in taking short...
SUSAN VREELAND

Do you really have to be the ice queen intellectual or the slut whore? Isn't there some way to be bo...
SUSAN SARANDON

It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the fin...
SUSAN SONTAG

Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating th...
SUSAN SONTAG

We have a great location between Boston and New York, a highly educated work force, and Connecticut ...
SUSAN BYSIEWICZ

I had wanted to be a regular character on a series for a while. 'The Brady Bunch' was an ans...
SUSAN OLSEN

I would rather be at Reggae Sunsplash, which happens once a year, than doing some horrible Brady Bun...
SUSAN OLSEN

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but ...
SUSAN CAIN

War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view realistically; that is,...
SUSAN SONTAG

Reality Check
His lying is not contigent on who you are or what you do. His lying is not your f...
SUSAN FORWARD

Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to the...
SUSAN SONTAG

Al forms of consensus about great books and perennial problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate...
SUSAN SONTAG

American energy is the energy of violence, of free-floating resentment and anxiety unleashed by chro...
SUSAN SONTAG

The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of A...
SUSAN SONTAG

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intelle...
SUSAN SONTAG

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own expe...
SUSAN SONTAG

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art ...
SUSAN SONTAG

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the ra...
SUSAN SONTAG

Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading towa...
SUSAN SONTAG

I believe in using words, not fists... I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on...
SUSAN SARANDON

What is most beautiful in virile men is sometimes feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women...
SUSAN SONTAG

The more interesting life becomes, in other words, the more boredom we are doomed to experience.
SUSAN MAUSHART

When the enemy has no face, society will invent one.
SUSAN FALUDI

Ah, Macy Joleen O'James, I love you. More than I ever knew it was possible to love someone. I want t...
SUSAN ANDERSEN

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehe...
SUSAN SONTAG

The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication.
SUSAN SONTAG

She knew with painful certainty that the opposite of love was not hate, but indifference.
SUSAN WIGGS

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The questio...
SUSAN SONTAG

So that’s your sister?” asks Dee in a quiet voice.
“Yeah.”
“The one you risked y...
SUSAN EE

We all go through the same things - it's just a different kind of the same thing
SUSAN GLASPELL

And it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to tak...
SUSAN KAY

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world."

[Speech upon being awa...
SUSAN SONTAG

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.

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Susan Orlean

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

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