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" 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
Feel
Day
Happy
Related Quotes:
" To my great surprise, Twitter is not housed in a silver pod that orbits Earth at supersonic speeds, vacuuming up and then dispersing digital bits of worldwide chitchat; it's in a big, bland office building in downtown San Francisco, near a bowling alley and an Old Navy. "
Susan Orlean
Navy
Surprise
Building
" Recently, I have come to assume that any call to my landline is from a telemarketer or an automated call from Terminex, letting me know that our regularly scheduled pest-extermination service will occur on its regular schedule. So I usually ignore my home phone. "
Susan Orlean
Ignore
Service
Home
" I'm very excited about my new Spotify account, which gives me access to twenty gazillion songs any time, all the time. The day I opened my account, though, I sat there perplexed. How would I figure out what I wanted to hear? "
Susan Orlean
Me
Hear
Excited
" They will be given as gifts; books that are especially pretty or visual will be bought as hard copies; books that are collectible will continue to be collected; people with lots of bookshelves will keep stocking them; and anyone who likes to make notes in books will keep buying books with margins to fill. "
Susan Orlean
Will
People
Keep
" Oversized houses, like oversized cars, seem to be a particularly American fixation. "
Susan Orlean
Like
Seem
American
" 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
" Here's a habit I never thought I'd develop: I gravitate to anything online that's marked 'most popular' or 'most e-mailed.' And I hate myself a little bit every time I do. "
Susan Orlean
Time
Thought
Myself
" 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
" My ace in the hole as a human being used to be my capacity for remembering birthdays. I worked at it. Whenever I made a new friend, I made a point of finding out his or her birthday early on, and I would record it in my Filofax calendar. "
Susan Orlean
Early
Finding
New
" I'm always mystified by the day-to-day workings of entities like Twitter that provide framework but not content, but I suppose it could be compared to the U.S. Postal Service, which manages to keep a lot of people employed doing lots of stuff other than writing letters. "
Susan Orlean
Writing
People
Content
" 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
World
Experience
Life
" 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
" Parents, it seems, have an almost Olympian persistence when it comes to suggesting more secure and lucrative lines of work for their children who have the notion that writing is an actual profession. I say this from experience. "
Susan Orlean
Experience
Children
Persistence
" Keeping animals, I have learned, is all about water. Who even knew chickens drank water? I didn't, but they do, and a lot. "
Susan Orlean
I Have Learned
Water
Chickens
" I had never considered using a hashtag anywhere other than on Twitter, but now I'm inspired. Text messages have always seemed a little flat to me, so the murmuring Greek chorus of a hashtag might be a perfect way to liven them up and give them a bit of dimension. "
Susan Orlean
Me
Always
Never
" 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. "
Susan Orlean
Worthy
Work
Out
" 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
Picture
Impossible
Find
" When a machine can do something better and faster than a person can, I am happy to let the machine do it. "
Susan Orlean
Person
Better
Happy
" 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
Feel
Internet
Life
" I finally overcame my phobia, and now I approach flying with a sort of studied boredom - a learned habit, thanks to my learn-to-fly-calmly training - but like all former flying phobics, I retain a weird and feverish fascination with aviation news, especially bad news. "
Susan Orlean
Flying
Weird
Training
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I am of mixed minds about the issue of privacy. On one hand, I understand that information is power, and power is, well, power, so keeping your private information to yourself is essential - especially if you are a controversial figure, a celebrity, or a dissident. "
Susan Orlean
Power
Yourself
You
" I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done. "
Susan Orlean
Think
Procrastination
Myself
" 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
" Buying a car used to be an experience so soul-scorching, so confidence-splattering, so existentially rattling that an entire car company was based on the promise that you wouldn't have to come in contact with it. "
Susan Orlean
Car
Company
Experience
" I remember three- and four-week-long snow days, and drifts so deep a small child, namely me, could get lost in them. No such winter exists in the record, but that's how Ohio winters seemed to me when I was little - silent, silver, endless, and dreamy. "
Susan Orlean
Me
Child
Deep
" 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
Story
Good
Matter
" I went to a football school, which meant that I went to a university that served up education and was simultaneously operating a sports franchise. "
Susan Orlean
Football
Education
Up