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" One of my favorite activities as a teen-ager was to watch television over the phone with my best friend. "
Susan Orlean
Phone
Friend
Best Friend
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" 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
" 'Brave' is one of those words that has been bleached of most of its meaning these days, thanks to far too many appearances in the glaring light of ad slogans and corporate public relations. I never thought about anything as brave anymore; it just seemed like a flabby, glib cliche. "
Susan Orlean
Light
Thought
Words
" States should pass laws making it illegal to own or trade wild animals; the phony 'educational' permits that many private owners have used to skirt those laws should be eliminated. "
Susan Orlean
Trade
Wild
Wild Animals
" 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
Remember
Stand Up
Stand
" 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
" There will always be vain, obsessive people who want to own rare and extraordinary things whatever the cost; there will always be people for whom owning beautiful, dangerous animals brings a sense of power and magic. "
Susan Orlean
Animals
Power
People
" 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 want a chainsaw very badly, because I think cutting down a tree would be unbelievably satisfying. I have asked for a chainsaw for my birthday, but I think I'll probably be given jewelry instead. "
Susan Orlean
Birthday
Down
Jewelry
" There was a time when I kept track of it all; when my mind worked like a giant lint brush being swept over the fuzzy surface of popular culture. But these days, pop culture seems to have gotten fuzzier and fuzzier; notoriety comes and goes in the snap of a finger. "
Susan Orlean
Like
Over
Mind
" 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 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
" You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park, even after many, many hours spent there with them, and many hours of conversation. But if - knock on wood - anything should ever happen to your dog, these nameless non-strangers will rally, sympathize, offer to help, and hold your hand. I know this from experience. "
Susan Orlean
You
People
Know
" 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
" Borders had lousy management and made bad corporate decisions, so its fate is less like a terrible accident than a slow-motion slide into a ditch, but it's hard to be happy about a bookseller's demise. "
Susan Orlean
Decisions
Be Happy
Management
" The semiology and phenomenology of hashtaggery intrigues me. From what I understand, it all began very simply: on Twitter, hashtags - those little checkerboard marks that look like this # - were used to mark phrases or names, in order to make it easier to search for them among the zillions and zillions of tweets. "
Susan Orlean
Understand
Search
Names
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Places like Hilton Head, with water adjacency and nice climates, are in high demand, and land values are insane. In the case of Hilton Head, which was developed in 1970 on what had been a mosquito- and alligator-infested swampy barrier island, land value has leaped from nearly zero to now unaffordable. "
Susan Orlean
Now
Nice
Island
" In my perfect world, we would establish perhaps four national zoos of unimpeachable quality and close the rest of them. "
Susan Orlean
Four
Perfect
Quality
" I heard a computer scientist the other day refer to playing with the Kinect as 'storytelling.' At first I thought that sounded a little high-minded, but after trying a few games I could see what she meant. "
Susan Orlean
Day
Trying
Thought
" I work at home, in the country, and days will go by when, except for my husband and son and the occasional UPS man, the only sentient creatures that see me are my chickens and turkeys. "
Susan Orlean
Me
Home
Husband
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I feel somewhat responsible for the Borders Books bankruptcy. "
Susan Orlean
Feel
Responsible
Books