330 Quotes by Susan Orlean

I didn’t want to talk, and I didn’t think dogs could solve my problems. But they were so uncritical and un-judgmental. Sometimes when you’re really blue, you don’t want to talk, but you want that sense of companionship. I certainly enjoy that with my beasts.

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.

The fact that dogs are not people means you don’t have as much response to the particulars.

I wish I had coined the phrase ‘tyranny of choice,’ but someone beat me to it. The counterintuitive truth is that have an abundance of options does not make you feel privileged and indulged; too many options make you feel like all of them are wrong, and that you are wrong if you choose any of them.

I’ve definitely taken a lot of consolation from animals in my life. There have been times when I’ve been really sad, and they gave solace and comfort and companionability more than a person.

I wanted to have my books around me, forming a totem pole of the narratives I’d visited.

Every corny thing that’s said about living with nature – being in harmony with the earth, feeling the cycle of the seasons – happens to be true.

I don’t like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.

In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod, I have found myself wandering the musical hallways of my past and reacquainting myself with music I haven’t listened to in years.