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" 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
Children
Media
Parents
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" You could go crazy thinking of how unprivate our lives really are - the omnipresent security cameras, the tracking data on our very smart phones, the porous state of our Internet selves, the trail of electronic crumbs we leave every day. "
Susan Orlean
Smart
Thinking
Day
" 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
Me
Now
Surprise
" I was never any good at remembering dates, but now I hardly have to. When the first bulb catalogs get delivered and the hens start laying again, that's all the notice I'll need to know that winter has passed. "
Susan Orlean
Know
Need
Now
" 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
Dog
Book
Smell
" One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day. "
Susan Orlean
Snow
Best
Day
" 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
Love
Vine
Trumpet
" College athletics are so entrenched and enjoyed by so many people that they will never be discontinued or substantially changed. I know that. I just pity the people caught in that tender trap. And most of all, I pity those kids. "
Susan Orlean
College
Just
Know
" The iPhone calendar isn't bad, but it isn't great, either. It only offers a day view and a month view - it doesn't have a week view, which drives me crazy. "
Susan Orlean
Great
Day
Crazy
" 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
Say
Think
You
" I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story. "
Susan Orlean
Believe
Sports
Story
" Election Day outside of big cities is different. For one thing, there are so few people in my town that each individual vote really does matter, and several local races have been decided by as many votes as you can count on one hand. "
Susan Orlean
People
Matter
Election
" In an interesting inversion of status, the reigning breed in the dog park these days is the really-oddball-unidentifiable-mixed-breed-mutt-found-wandering-the-street or its equivalent. The stranger the mutt the better; the more peculiar the circumstance of it coming into your life, the better. "
Susan Orlean
Life
Park
Interesting
" Dog parks are more cliquish than any other human gathering with the possible exception of seventh grade. Deal with it. "
Susan Orlean
Gathering
Possible
Human
" When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian corn on the front stoop; there was nothing electric, nothing inflatable, nothing with latex membranes or strobes. "
Susan Orlean
Holiday
Kid
Nothing
" 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
Me
Sight
Space
" I have worked on PCs and on Macs and, while I have my preferences, I don't find it crippling to work on one rather than the other. "
Susan Orlean
Other
Find
Work
" 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. "
Susan Orlean
Myself
Music
Past
" When I wonder what the future of books will be, I often think about horses. Before automobiles existed, everyone had a horse. Then cars became available, and their convenience, compared to horses, was undeniable. "
Susan Orlean
Everyone
Horse
Wonder
" 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
Fly
Attention
Long
" 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
You
Waiting
Love
" I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus. "
Susan Orlean
New York
Writing
Great
" I have no idea how to get in touch with anyone anymore. Everyone, it seems, has a home phone, a cell phone, a regular e-mail account, a Facebook account, a Twitter account, and a Web site. Some of them also have a Google Voice number. There are the sentimental few who still have fax machines. "
Susan Orlean
Voice
Cell Phone
Google
" 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
Law
Writing
Three
" Every single one of my books had its title changed almost as we were going to press, for all sorts of different reasons. "
Susan Orlean
Single
Books
Different
" I wonder what book signings will be like when most of the books we read are electronic. Will authors sign something else? A flyer, perhaps? A special kind of card devised for the purpose? "
Susan Orlean
Book
Kind
Purpose
" 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
Parcel
Realize
Out
" 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
Phone
Own
Rain
" A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder. "
Susan Orlean
Day
Snow
Wonder
" 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
Always
Video Games
Ambition
" Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that. "
Susan Orlean
Say
Bad
Google