Quotes from 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.

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

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.

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.

The trick was to live here without hating yourself because all around you was hatred. The trick was to refuse to allow your pain to prevent you from living honorably.

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.

He told himself he had never felt so happy, and he felt a sort of ache that this was happening and would never again happen in just this way no matter how long he lived.

Tourists reminded him of other places and elicited in him a prodding doubt that living here was what he wanted.

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.

Journalism is just the facts." He had been learning about journalism at school, from a textbook, and it seemed to him that his father had abridged some basic journalistic principle. "But which facts?" Arthur asked him. "Which facts do we print, Ishmael?

my religion is home and all that attends it.

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.

It ate at whatever was warm nearby, and then the coldness settled in permanently. You learned to live with it

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.

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.

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.

He told himself he had never felt so happy, and he felt a sort of ache that this was happening and would never happen again in just this way no matter how long he lived.

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.'

Everybody knows what God is,' said his mother. 'You feel what God is, don't you?

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?

You don't much think it did," said Alvin Hooks. "Your opinion is otherwise, it appears. But on what do you base your opinion, sir? You have not denied that my scenario is plausible. You have not denied that this premeditated murder might have happened in precisely the fashion I have just described, have you, Mr. Gillanders—have you?" "No, I haven't," Josiah said. "But—" "No further questions," said Alvin Hooks.

To put this another way, my words here recede from lived experience. But in the end there's too much reproach and ignorance—depression as a cause for disgrace and contempt—for me not to write them anyway. Words, after all, remain, in this world, an aperture through which might appear some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears.

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.

made myself a man whose book was like blinders, but listened like a man for whom listening meant survival