Susan Orlean
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.
Writers like to write, and writing in different forms - short, long, bite-sized, done on the fly, done with painstaking attention - all interest me.
I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing.
I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.
In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod, I have found myself wandering the musical hallways of my past and reacquainting myself with music I haven't listened to in years.
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.Collection: Believe
You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.Collection: Writing
Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.Collection: Library
An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain.Collection: Ordinary
Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.Collection: Writing
There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Falling In Love
The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I’m tired.Collection: Morning
I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.Collection: Animal
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.Collection: Fun
I would argue that it might be easier to endure loneliness than to endure the idea that you might disappear.Collection: Loneliness
My inspiration is really very simple: I'm struck by things that I want to know more about. I really do react just as a curious person: who is this person? What's the story behind this situation? Why do people like this or dislike this thing?Collection: Inspiration
Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.Collection: Mean
The fact that dogs are not people means you don't have as much response to the particulars.Collection: Dog
I've definitely taken a lot of consolation from animals in my life. There have been times when I've been really sad, and they gave solace and comfort and companionability more than a person.Collection: Taken
I think part of a hero construct is overcoming loss, or being abandoned, or having to make your own way in the world.Collection: Hero
Among all life forms, there are creatures with charisma and creatures without. It's one of those ineffable qualities we can't quite define, but we all seem to respond similarly to.Collection: Quality
I think on a day-to-day basis, what attracts us in coexisting with another living, evolving thing, is that you have a relationship that's different than with a piece of furniture. We experience the cycle of life through these other beings.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Fashion
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.Collection: Guarantees That
If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger?Collection: Littles
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.Collection: Dog
Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.Collection: Hunting
When we stopped to rest and Tony tried to figure out what was wrong with his compass, I asked him what he thought it was about orchids that seduced humans so completely that they were compelled to steal them and worship them and try to breed new and specific kinds of them and then be willing to wait for nearly a decade for one of them to flower.Collection: Flower
I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it.Collection: Writing
I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.Collection: Passion
Like writing, running is so much about mind over matter. There are times when you have to override the discomfort and keep pushing. That capacity to endure and then prevail is just amazing.Collection: Running
When you're researching you're learning. When you're writing, you're teaching.Collection: Teaching
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.Collection: Spiritual
I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.Collection: Hiking
I'm much more willing to buy a novel electronically by someone I don't know. Because if halfway through I think, I don't really like this, I can just stop. I can't throw books out, even if I think they're crummy. I feel like I've got to give it to the library. I've got to loan it to somebody, or I keep it on my shelf. It's like a plant.Collection: Book
The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.Collection: Problem
There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to. It's like trying to write a song, making tiny tweaks, reading it out loud, shifting things to make it sound a certain way... Sometimes it feels like digging out of a hole, but sometimes it feels like flying. When it's working and the rhythm's there, it does feel like magic to me.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Dog
We're fascinated by animals because it's almost like having Martians living among us. We can see some familiarity in them, but they're entirely different creatures.Collection: Animal
I love Japanese design and fabrics. I also love people who make clothes for mass consumption but do it well and cleverly.Collection: Clothes
I approach stories as a private educational enterprise: I want to learn about something. I teach myself through research, reporting, and thinking, and then, when I feel like I know the story, I tell it to readers.Collection: Educational
I've used Twitter now and again to try to figure something out; it's an amazing resource. But I think you have to use it judiciously: it's a self-selected group, so it's important not to start thinking of it as the whole world.Collection: Thinking
I think the responsibility of running a huge business, which happens if you become a successful designer, probably makes you more careful.Collection: Running
Writing about unknown people means I spend a lot of time arguing to the reader about why it's worth knowing about them. That's challenging, but then the piece is pure discovery.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: People
I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.Collection: Real
Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in FloridaCollection: Thinking