330 Quotes by Susan Orlean

A book feels like a thing alive in this moment, and also alive in a continuum, from the moment the thoughts about it first percolated in the writer’s mind to the moment it sprang from the printing press – a lifeline that continues as someone sits with it and marvels over it, and it continues on,...

Sometimes it’s harder to notice a place you think you know well; you eyes glide over it, seeing it but not seeing it at all. It’s almost as if familiarity gives you a kind of temporary blindness. I had to force myself to look harder and try to see beyond the concept of library that was so latent in my brain.

I am happy if I can give them away or donate them. But I can’t throw a book in the trash, no matter how hard I try.

Apparently, everyone in Los Angeles gets on the computer right after Thanksgiving dinner and makes requests for diet books.

The next morning, close to two thousand people showed up at the library.

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.

The Nazis alone destroyed an estimated hundred million books during their twelve years in power.

According to a 2010 study, almost three hundred million Americans used one of the country’s 17,078 public libraries and bookmobiles in the course of the year.

Even after I’d published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.