David Guterson Quotes

Well, I think it's extraordinarily fun to write, and I look forward to it every day, but that doesn't mean I think it's easy. There's a difference between the two. It's fun in the way all worthwhile things are fun – there's difficulty attached to it. I think that a writer has to accept a certain amount of frustration. It's inherent in the task, and you have to simply persevere. It's part of the definition of the work. ~ David Guterson

I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that. ~ David Guterson

The rain fell with such fervor that the world disappeared. ~ David Guterson

The river of his youth had been diverted and poured out broadly across the land to seep through dirt to the roots of crops instead of running in its bed. The river was no longer a river, and the desert was no longer a desert. Nothing was as it had been.
He knew what had happened to the sagelands. He himself had helped burn them. Then men like his father had seized the river without a trace of evil in their hearts, sure of themselves but ignorant, and children of their time entirely, with no other bearings to rely on. Irrigators and fruit-tree growers, they believed the river to be theirs. His own life spanned that time and this, and so he believed in the old fast river as much as he believed in apple orchards, and yet he saw that the two were at odds, the river defeated that apples might grow as far as Royal Slope. It made no more sense to love the river and at the same time kill it growing apples than it made sense to love small birds on the wing and shoot them over pointing dogs. But he'd come into the world in another time, a time immune to these contradictions and in the end he couldn't shake old ways any more than he could shake his name. ~ David Guterson

The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs. ~ David Guterson

He decided then that he would love her forever no matter what came to pass. It was not so much a matter of deciding as accepting the inevitability of it. It made him feel better, though he felt perturbed, too, worried that this kiss was wrong. But from his point of view, at fourteen years old, their love was entirely unavoidable. It had started on the day they'd clung to his glass box and kissed in the sea, and now it must go on forever. He felt certain of this. ~ David Guterson

There's a certain nostalgia and romance in a place you left. ~ David Guterson

I don't feel anything either way. No feeling about it comes to me - it's not something I have a choice about. Isn't a feeling like that supposed to happen? I can't make a feeling like that up, can I? Maybe God just chooses certain people, and the rest of us - we can't feel Him. ~ David Guterson

To die, he thought, was to escape passion's grasp, but that was the last thing he wanted. Instead he wished to be seized by passion and pinioned, held in its palm forever - he could not imagine any other existence as embracing any real happiness. ~ David Guterson

None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we're safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is. ~ David Guterson

Oh, to be young. To still be one's own hero. ~ David Guterson

His cynicism - a veteran's cynicism - was a thing that disturbed him all the time. It seemed to him after the war that the world was thoroughly altered. It was not even a thing you could explain to anybody, why it was that everything was folly. People appeared enormously foolish to him. He understood that they were only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids. He had seen the insides of jaggedly ripped-open dead people. He knew, for instance, what brains looked like spilling out of somebody's head. In the context of this, much of what went on in normal life seemed wholly and disturbingly ridiculous. ~ David Guterson

There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can ... Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason. ~ David Guterson

No one [Islanders] trod easily upon the emotions of another where the sea licked everywhere against an endless shoreline. And this was excellent and poor at the same time-excellent because it meant most people took care, poor because it meant an inbreeding of the spirit, too much held in, regret and silent brooding, a world whose inhabitants walked in trepidation, in fear of opening up...They could not speak freely because they were cornered: everywhere they turned there was water and more water, a limitless expanse of it in which to drown. They held their breath and walked with care, and this made them who they were inside, constricted and small, good neighbors. ~ David Guterson

What sustains me is to be with my family and to write. ~ David Guterson

Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it. ~ David Guterson

my religion is home and all that attends it. ~ David Guterson

My book is traditional. It runs counter to the post-modern spirit. ~ David Guterson

He hoped it would snow recklessly and bring to the island the impossible winter purity, so rare and precious, he remembered fondly from his youth. ~ David Guterson

There were guys who prayed at Tarawa,' said Ishmael. 'They still got killed, Mother. Just like the guys who didn't pray. It didn't matter either way. ~ David Guterson

I say this because as an older man I am prone to ponder matters in the light of death in a way that you are not. I am like a traveler from Mars who looks down in astonishment at what passes here. And what I see is the same human frailty passed from generation to generation. What I see is again and again the same sad human frailty. We hate one another; we are the victims of irrational fears. And there is nothing in the stream of human history to suggest we are going to change this. But
I digress, confess that. I merely wish to point out that in the face of such a world you have only yourselves to rely on. You have only the decision you must make, each of you, alone. And will you contribute to the indifferent forces that ceaselessly conspire toward injustice? Or will you stand up against this endless tide and in the face of it be truly human? ~ David Guterson

Satellites can see your thoughts, but not through rock,' is like something they might say. In John William's case, it was conscious hyperbole and therefore commentary. At one level, it was reefer-inspired. It was partly for fun. It was other things, too-but not derangement. I give no credence to the interpretation, and I knew him better than anybody. ~ David Guterson

Ben remembered that in Italy, he and Rachel had slipped down between rows of apple trees on the plain of the Po, deep into the cool and dark of orchards, and there they had kissed with the sadness of newlyweds who know that their kisses are too poignantly tender and that their good fortune is subject, like all things, to the crush of time, which remorselessly obliterates what is most desired and pervades all that is beautiful. ~ David Guterson

I was born in Washington State and have lived here for 42 plus years. ~ David Guterson

The bottom line was that he didn't want to die. As far as he was concerned, death was the problem. The basic human problem. Everyone's problem. He wasn't any different from anyone else, but there was no consolation in that. ~ David Guterson

That the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty ~ David Guterson

He had watched her, after all, mourn her husband's death and it had been for her in part the discovery that grief could attach itself with permanence - something Ishmael had already discovered. It attached itself and then it burrowed inside and made a nest and stayed. It ate whatever was warm nearby, and then the coldness settled in permanently. You learned to live with it. ~ David Guterson

Today and in a good winter mood, someone not subject to seasonal affective disorder, someone with a generous ~ David Guterson

I grew up in Seattle, but I always knew I wanted to leave. ~ David Guterson

The prospect of death in autumn, she said, was irrelevant next to its happy recognition of its participation in the life of the tree itself. ~ David Guterson

I think of myself as a really happy person. ~ David Guterson

Tell the truth,' Nels said. 'Decide to tell the truth before it's too late. ~ David Guterson

[H]e had this view of things - that most human activity was utter folly, his own included, and that his existence in the world made others nervous. ~ David Guterson

To persevere is always a reflection of the state of one's inner life, one's philosophy and one's perspective ~ David Guterson

When it's time to confess, you don't know what you're saying. Are you telling the truth, or do you confuse your lies with reality? The question is comical. The answer is lost in the maelstroms of consciousness. It's even impossible to pretend, eventually, that the question wasn't asked. You've been kidding yourself about yourself for so long, you're someone else. Your you is just a fragile fabrication. Every morning, you have to wake up, assemble this busy, dissembling monster, and get him or her on his or her feet again for another round of fantasy. ~ David Guterson

To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality" of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime. ~ David Guterson

I have been trying to think clearly about everything and to use all this distance to advantage. And here is what I've discovered. I don't love you, Ishmael. ~ David Guterson

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars. ~ David Guterson

I can't tell you what to do, Ishmael. I've tried to understand what it's been like for you - having gone to war, having lost your arm, not having married or had children. I've tried to make sense of it all, believe me, I have - how it must feel to be you. But I must confess that, no matter how I try, I can't really understand you. There are other boys, after all, who went to war and came back home and pushed on with their lives. They found girls and married and had children and raised families despite whatever was behind them. But you - you went numb, Ishmael. And you've stayed numb all these years. ~ David Guterson

The trick was to refuse to allow your pain to prevent you from living honorably. In Japan, she said, a person learned not to complain or be distracted by suffering. To persevere was always a reflection of the state of one's inner life, one's philosophy, and one's perspective. It was best to accept old age, death, injustice, hardship – all of these were part of living ~ David Guterson

A literary achievement of the highest order. ~ David Guterson

At one level you're condemned to the voice you have. But within those confines, you have a certain amount of freedom to range among your possible voices. ~ David Guterson

I write because something inner and unconscious forces me to. That is the first compulsion. The second is one of ethical and moral duty. I feel responsible to tell stories that inspire readers to consider more deeply who they are. ~ David Guterson

We Japanese, on the other hand, know our egos are nothing. We bend our egos, all of the time, and that is where we differ. That is the fundamental difference, Hatsue. We bend our heads, we bow and are silent, because we understand that by ourselves alone, we are nothing at all, dust in a strong wind, while the 'hakujin' believes his aloneness is everything, his separateness is the foundation of his existence. He seeks and grasps, seeks and grasps for his separateness, while we seek union with the Greater Life
you must see that these are distinct paths we are travelling, Hatsue, the 'hakujin' and we Japanese (p. 176). ~ David Guterson

When I think about John William now, I think about someone who followed through, and then I'm glad not to have followed through, to still be breathing, to still be here with people, to still be walking in the mountains, and to still be uncertain
even with all this cash on hand
in a way I seem to have no choice about. I'm a hypocrite, of course, and I live with that, but I live. ~ David Guterson

What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time. ~ David Guterson

Accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart. ~ David Guterson

I'm interested in themes that endure from generation to generation. ~ David Guterson

An argument ensued about abundance, leisure, work, nature, and what a second girl kept calling 'the American way.' When I asked her what she meant by 'the American way,' she said, 'Basically the destruction of everything
the world, your happiness, your soul, everything. The complete package. Evil and war. That's who we are, Mr. Countryman.' ~ David Guterson

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me. ~ David Guterson

He didn't like very many people any more, or very many things either. He preferred not to be this way, but there it was, he was like that. His cynicism, a veteran's cynicism, was a thing that disturbed him all the time. ~ David Guterson

...and Miss Dietrich smiled and nodded at this and said that a girl in search of a husband should squeeze apple seeds between her fingers: if any struck the ceiling, she was sure to be happy in her quest, for apples were the fruit of love. ~ David Guterson

I think you have an obligation to share what you know as a writer. ~ David Guterson

If disaster, so be it, they said to themselves. There was nothing to be done except what could be done. The rest
like the salt water around them, which swallowed the snow without effort, remaining what it was implacably
was out of their hands, beyond. ~ David Guterson

The world was incomprehensibly intricate, and yet this forest made a simple sense in her heart that she felt nowhere else.
[S]he wanted only her own strawberry farm, the fragrance of the fields and the cedar trees, and to live simply in this place forever.
[S]he had fallen into loving him long before she knew herself, though it occurred to her now that she might never know herself, that perhaps no one ever does, that such a thing might not be possible.
[Y]ou should learn to say nothing that will cause you regret. You should not say what is not in your heart
or what is only in your heart for a moment. But you know this
silence is better. ~ David Guterson

I know you'll think this is crazy, but all I want to do is hold you, and I think that if you'll let me do that just for a few seconds, I can walk away, and never speak to you again. ~ David Guterson

The whites, you see, are tempted by their egos and have no means to resist. We Japanese, on the other hand, know our egos are nothing. We bend our egos, all of the time, and that is where we differ. That is the fundamental difference, Hatsue. We bend our heads, we bow and are silent, because we understand that by ourselves, alone, we are nothing at all, dust in a strong wind, while the hakujin believes his aloneness is everything, his separateness is the foundation of his existence. He seeks and grasps, seeks and grasps for his separateness, while we seek union with the Greater Life - you must see that these are distinct paths we are traveling, Hatsue, the hakujin and we Japanese. ~ David Guterson

The real question is: How do you react? What do you do next? Evade responsibilities? Bury yourself in work? What do you do? All three of my novels take up that question, although none gives an answer. ~ David Guterson

Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it. ~ David Guterson

They were taken from Anacortes on a train to a transit camp - the horse stables at the Puyallup fairgrounds. They lived in the horse stalls and slept on canvas army cots; at nine p.m. they were confined to their stalls; at ten p.m. they were made to turn out their lights, one bare bulb for each family. The cold in the stalls worked into their bones, and when it rained that night they moved their cots because of the leaks in the roof. The next morning, at six A.M., they slogged through mud to the transit camp mess hall and ate canned figs and white bread from pie tins and drank coffee out of tin cups. ~ David Guterson

We should recognize that schools will never solve the bedrock problems of education because the problems are problems of families, of cultural pressures that the schools reflect and thus cannot really remedy. ~ David Guterson

I have traveled the entire state and spent a lot of time out of doors. So I have known the landscape of the Columbia Basin for quite a while, and I have had this strong feeling about it for many years. ~ David Guterson

It doesn't matter who you are, how many awards you've won, how popular you are, or how much critical acclaim you've had. ~ David Guterson

How could they say that they truly loved each other? They had simply grown up together, been children together, and the proximity of it, the closeness of it, had produced in them love s illusion. And yet
on the other hand
what was love if it wasn't this instinct she felt ... ~ David Guterson

The place felt sinister, though. Your imagination can get the better of you where a road ends against a forest. ~ David Guterson

Through the side window, a screen of late-afternoon sunlight is projected onto the wall. Shadows of birds flit across it.
Some shadows are sharp, some shadows are blurry.
I've seen them before in another time and place. ~ David Mitchell

To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit. ~ David Hume

On average, dopamine receptor density is reduced in the VTA target regions of obese subjects as compared with those lean subjects (a characteristic that can be measured in a brain scanner). But the key question remains: Do obese individuals show reduced dopaminergic activation of VTA target areas in response to food? Is a blunted pleasure response to food involved in obesity? ~ David J. Linden

The thought of going abroad makes my heart Leap," (Charles) Sumner wrote. "I feel, when I commune with myself about it, as when dwelling on the countenance and voice of a lovely girl. I am in love with Europa. ~ David McCullough

We've all done this - created our mix-and-match families, our homemade safety nets. ~ David Levithan

I have never been much of a patriot. My father would not have allowed such a thing while he lived, and his death insured that his wish was carried out. Piter commanded far more affection and loyalty from me than the nation as a whole. But that night, running across the unplowed fields of winter wheat, with the Fascist invaders behind us and the dark Russian woods before us, I felt a surge of pure love for my country.
We ran for the forest, crashing through the stalks of wheat, beneath the rising moon and the stars spinning farther and farther away, alone beneath the godless sky. ~ David Benioff

That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The fraud part of me was always there, just as a puzzle piece, objectively speaking, is a true piece of the puzzle even before you see how it fits. ~ David Foster Wallace

So you're a sort of archivist for the future, ~ David Mitchell

What drives passion for getting the gospel to all people is not guilt, it's glory. ~ David Platt

In Globetrotter, David Albahari explores the consciousness of emigres from the former Yugoslavia, Croatia and Serbia, showing that while abroad, many of us are even more intensely preoccupied with our histories than we were while living in Yugoslavia. His narrative structured out of realistic details and perceptions with self-conscious meditation blending history, civilization and its discontents, and personal experience reaches a density and intensity akin to Krasznahorkai's and Thomas Bernhard's. An intensely idiosyncratic narrative, enjoyable and thoughtful. ~ Josip Novakovich

What sentence will you choose to impose on yourself? Are you willing to stop suffering and making yourself miserable when your sentence has expired? This would at least be a responsible way to punish yourself because it would be time-limited. ~ David D. Burns

Mind control of individuals, the general population and even assets of the Web is aimed at ensuring there are no surprises, maverick behaviour or situations and responses the Elite can't predict. ~ David Icke

'One Yellow Daffodil' is both a look to the past and to the future and expresses my belief in the great spirit and strength of our children. ~ David A. Adler

I keep repeating
that wherever there is life,
there is hope.
One day my fate will change. ~ David Elliott

You can't draw a tattoo on the face and expect it to be hidden when you don't wear a veil. ~ S.A. David

I let people down easy with inspiration. ~ David Hasselhoff

Security here in New York City is still very tight. Hookers in Times Square now are demanding two forms of fake ID. ~ David Letterman

A poem without metaphor is a gelding; useless to nightmares. ~ David Joseph Cribbin

Most people say they want justice, but they don't really want justice. They want revenge. They want to see the pain spread around equally. ~ David Gerrold

People like me know that there is no magic. There is only the grind. Work looks like magic to those unwilling to do it. ~ David Wong

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it. ~ David Starr Jordan

In terms of likeability, that's something that I don't think about as an actor when I approach a role. ~ David Duchovny

I don't consider myself a racist, I don't hate other peoples, but I certainly want to preserve my own. And I think that's true of all people. ~ David Duke

My favorite web site is probably YouTube. ~ David Henrie

Empathy's not standing over a hole looking down and saying you understand. Empathy is having been in that hole yourself. ~ David Joy

To leave this life, to me, is a sweet prospect. When you read this I will be quite dead and no answer will be possible. All I can say is that I offered you love, and the best I could. All I got in return in the end was a kick in the teeth. Thus I die alone and unloved. As you sowed, so shall you reap. ~ David Ferrie

Go Green, Live Rich is the ultimate toolkit for greening the planet and our wallets at the same time. No one does a better job than David Bach in showing us the practical strategies for how to enjoy living sustainably. ~ Terry Tamminen

One of the less apparent but most profound consequences of domestic electric lighting was the encouragement of reading at home. Increased reading broadened knowledge, stirred new interests, and created a more sophisticated society, especially away from centers of culture, which in turn increased demand for electricity. Persons who had trouble reading by dim fire- or candlelight, and especially young children who could not be left alone to regulate gaslights, could easily and safely read by electric light. Partly for this reason, the Muncie, Indiana, public library loaned out eight times as many books per inhabitant in 1925 as it had in 1890. The cartoon symbol of a light bulb being switched on over someone's head as they achieved new insight was firmly grounded in reality. ~ David E. Kyvig

I elbowed my way into the grubby café, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with cork crumbs floating in it, and eavesdropped on a pair of Shetland pony breeders. Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never led. Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don't, will is pitted against will. "Admire me, for I am a metaphor. ~ David Mitchell

I think it was really crucial that the actress was age appropriate. There are films, such as An Education, where that wasn't the case, and I think that really affects how you receive what you're watching. ~ David Schwimmer

A lot of self-help methods are based on mental discipline or on working through emotional issues. What these approaches lack in an awareness of how the body is an integral part of the equation. The health of your body influences what you experience in your mind. There is no split. If you can engage your whole spirit in the pursuit of fitness
not just your intellect, not just your emotions
but instead everything inside you that is truly you, you'll discover what it is to be a whole person. ~ David Patchell-Evans

Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome. ~ David Hare

Two aspects of a virus in action: transmissibility and virulence. These ~ David Quammen

Jacob Riis in his How the Other Half Lives ~ David McCullough