David Guterson

“I often heard about his cases and I often sat in on his trials. In the late 1960s when I was growing up I wanted to be a crusader like him but I didn't want to wear a suit and commute.”

“The world was incomprehensibly intricate, and yet this forest made a simple sense in her heart that she felt nowhere else.”

“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.”

“Post-modernism is dead because it didn't address human needs.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I think of myself as a really happy person.”

“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.”

“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?”

“Fiction is socially meaningful.”

“I'm interested in themes that endure from generation to generation.”

“My father is a practicing criminal law attorney in the Seattle area.”

“Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What sustains me is to be with my family and to write.”

“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.”

“Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it.”

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