David Guterson Quotes

48 quotes in 751 categories

• The best advice on writing I've ever received is to take it seriously, because to do it well is all-consuming.
• 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…
• I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• To persevere is always a reflection of the state of one's inner life, one's philosophy and one's perspective
• 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…
• Writers shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of what they’re doing, and they should treat it with great seriousness. You’re doing something that really matters, you’re telling…
• A literary achievement of the highest order.
• Fiction is socially meaningful.
• What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.
• 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…
• 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…
• It's a brooding melancholy that haunts me.
• Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.
• Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it.
• I became paralyzed as an artist with writer's block.
• I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.
• I think of myself as a really happy person.

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