Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean
Susan Orleanis an American 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth31 October 1955
CountryUnited States of America
mean news-stories seductive
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?
dog mean people
The fact that dogs are not people means you don't have as much response to the particulars.
mean animal selfless
Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.
real mean thinking
I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.
mean writing discovery
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.
mean writing different
Writing about someone well known removes that obligation of defending it as a subject, but it also means that some of the surprise and freshness is already gone. It's so different - in some ways much harder for me.
conversation engaged intimate lately loop noticed ongoing perpetual represent seems
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.
access figure gives opened sat songs time twenty
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?
anyone argue boyfriend looked mine mute rote watch
I don't care that much about rote memorization. An old boyfriend of mine used to get into lacerating arguments with his parents over facts, and I used to watch on in mute astonishment. How could anyone actually argue about something that could be looked up?
among began easier intrigues marks
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.
When a machine can do something better and faster than a person can, I am happy to let the machine do it.
almost among bad horrible rank type
There are many bad things in this world of ours, but the use of the word 'monetize' has to rank high among them. Also, 'incentivize.' Actually, all the '-ize' words, like 'contextualize' and 'utilize' and 'prioritize.' And - this is almost too horrible to type - 'juniorize.'
became books compared future wonder
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.
fun moving hands
When I heard about the Microsoft Kinect, though, I felt an urgency rising in me. A game you played without touching any machinery? A chance to wave your hands around, Minority-Report style, and move things around on a screen? This sounded like almost too much fun, with gadget-y pizzazz that sounded astonishing.