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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

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David Guterson
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: May 4
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Something
Write
Inspire
Tell
Consider
Compulsion
Stories
Responsible
Ethical
Firsts
Reader
Readers
First
Duty
Unconscious
Feel
Second
Forces
Feels
Moral
Deeply
Writing
Force
Inner

More quotes by David Guterson

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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
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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
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I think of myself as a really happy person.
David Guterson
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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
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accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.
David Guterson
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What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.
David Guterson
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You 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
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The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs.
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Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.
David Guterson
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The best advice on writing I've ever received is to take it seriously, because to do it well is all-consuming.
David Guterson
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That the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty
David Guterson
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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
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When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.
David Guterson
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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
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I'm not an urban person.
David Guterson
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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
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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.
David Guterson
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What sustains me is to be with my family and to write.
David Guterson
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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
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Everybody has a world, and that world is completely hidden until we begin to inquire. As soon as we do, that entire world opens to us and yields itself. And you see how full and complex it is.
David Guterson