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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
Stories
Responsible
Ethical
Firsts
Reader
Readers
First
Duty
Unconscious
Feel
Second
Forces
Feels
Moral
Deeply
Writing
Force
Inner
Something
Write
Inspire
Tell
Consider
Compulsion

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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I grew up in Seattle, but I always knew I wanted to leave.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.
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What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.
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Fiction is socially meaningful.
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What sustains me is to be with my family and to write.
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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.
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I think you have an obligation to share what you know as a writer.
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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.
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accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.
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