Quotes from Susan Orlean

A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.

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.

What's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is something that had been mostly absent from my life since junior high. In fact, the hallmark of life after junior high seemed to be the shedding of popularity as a central concern.

I remember thinking that a girdle was barbaric, and that never in a million years would I treat myself like a sleeping bag being shoved into a stuff sack. Never! Instead, I would run marathons and work out and be in perfect shape and reject the tyranny of the girdle forever.

Having animals in the city is entirely different from having animals out in the country. For one thing, it's more social. When you live on lots of acres without neighbors within a stone's throw, your dog-walks are usually solitary rambles over hill and dale.

There are cultures that believe having your photograph taken steals your soul. I don't think there is a stolen soul in a picture, but still - why is it so hard to throw them away?

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.

I would like to make sleeping my new hobby, except that I'm too tired, really, to have a hobby. But a girl can always dream.

Every single one of my books had its title changed almost as we were going to press, for all sorts of different reasons.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes I'm dazzled by how modern and fabulous we are, and how easy everything can be for us; that's the gilded glow of technology, and I marvel at it all the time.

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.

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.

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.

I've noticed lately that it seems most intimate to not use any closing on your e-mail at all, because it seems to make it feel like you are engaged in an ongoing conversation - as if this one e-mail doesn't represent the beginning and end of the interaction but is just part of a perpetual loop of friendly back-and-forth.

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.

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.

I am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to aspiring writers has passed its sell-by date.

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.

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.

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.

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.