330 Quotes by Susan Orlean

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

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

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

Every problem that society has, the library has, too, because the boundary between society and the library is porous; nothing good is kept out of the library, and nothing bad.

--but there is no money to be made by burning libraries. Instead, libraries are usually burned because they contain ideas that someone finds problematic.

We are all whispering into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is a sheer act of defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

The library might have been the first place I was ever given autonomy.

In the library, time is dammed up-- not just stopped but saved. The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who came to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.

We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is a sheer act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.