330 Quotes by Susan Orlean

Another senior librarian I interviewed that day told me that seeing the library in ruins so traumatized her that she didn’t get her period for the next four months.

My inspiration is really very simple: I’m struck by things that I want to know more about. I really do react just as a curious person: who is this person? What’s the story behind this situation? Why do people like this or dislike this thing?

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.

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.

We do a lot of bird-watching up in the country, but we almost never have a chance to people-watch. There simply aren’t enough human beings up here: there is nowhere you can park yourself with a cup of coffee and observe the species on parade.

Public libraries in the United States outnumber McDonald’s; they outnumber retail bookstores two to one.

I think on a day-to-day basis, what attracts us in coexisting with another living, evolving thing, is that you have a relationship that’s different than with a piece of furniture. We experience the cycle of life through these other beings.

My mother imbued me with a love of libraries. The reason why I finally embraced this book project – wanted, and then needed, to write it – was my realization that I was losing her. I found myself wondering whether a shared memory can exist if one of the people sharing it no longer remembers it. Is the circuit.

There where one burns books, one in the end burns men.