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

Categorized in : Spiritual Smart Gratitude

One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.

Susan Orlean

joy snow children

Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.

Susan Orlean

texture space world

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

falling-in-love men night

I love Japanese design and fabrics. I also love people who make clothes for mass consumption but do it well and cleverly.

Susan Orlean

clothes design people

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

believe people ideas

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

writing father book

Everything rational and sensible abandons me when I try to throw out photographs. Time and time again, I hold one over a wastebasket, and then find it impossible to release my fingers and let the picture drop and disappear.

Susan Orlean

photograph impossible trying

I think the responsibility of running a huge business, which happens if you become a successful designer, probably makes you more careful.

Susan Orlean

successful responsibility running

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

Susan Orlean

simply-love writing

I remember, when I was a kid, watching my mother jam herself into her girdle - a piece of equipment so rigid it could stand up on its own - and I remember her coming home from fancy parties and racing upstairs to extricate herself from its cruel iron grip.

Susan Orlean

party mother home

Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

Susan Orlean

library rich exciting

I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.

Susan Orlean

creativity ideas thinking

The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I’m tired.

Susan Orlean

tired morning thinking

I rarely listen to commercial radio, and when I do, I'm shocked by how many ads there are, and how annoying they are, and how bad the radio station usually is.

Susan Orlean

ads annoying radio

Knowledge is a beautiful thing, but there are a few things I wish I didn't know.

Susan Orlean

beautiful-things wish beautiful

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

unusual ordinary fun

Unlimited choice is paralyzing. The Internet has made this form of paralysis due to option overload a standard feature of comfortable modern life.

Susan Orlean

internet modern-life choices

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

news-stories seductive mean

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

wall smart dog

Writing about someone well known removes that obligation of defending it as a subject, but it also means that some of the surprise and freshness is already gone. It's so different - in some ways much harder for me.

Susan Orlean

different writing mean