Susan Orlean Quotes

United States, Journalist
October 31, 1955

Susan Orlean is a journalist and author. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to many magazines including Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside.

The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.

Susan Orlean
The reading of the book was a journey. There was no need for souvenirs.

Susan Orlean

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

Susan Orlean
- Writing
- Love
- Remind
I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.

Susan Orlean
An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain.

Susan Orlean
Destroying a culture’s books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived.

Susan Orlean
Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.

Susan Orlean
- Writing
- Head
- Page
There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

Susan Orlean
- Want
- Sentence
- Mastery

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.

Susan Orlean
- Time
- Reader
- Subject
Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

Susan Orlean
- Writing
- Book
- Memory