David Guterson Quotes

“He had visited his family the evening before, eaten dinner with Renee and Chris, his grandson, in the pretence that everything was ordinary, but in fact to service his end-game ruse. He was going over the mountains, he'd said, to hunt for quail in willow canyons, he had no particular canyons in mind, he intended to return on Thursday evening, though possibly, if the hunting was good, he would return on Friday or Saturday. The lie was open-ended so that his family wouldn't start worrying until he'd been dead for as long as a week - so none would miss or seek him where he rotted silently in the sage. Ben imagined how it might be otherwise, his cancer a pestilent force in their lives, or a pall descending over them like ice, just as they'd begun to emerge from the pall of Rachel's death. The last thing they needed was for Ben to tell hem of his terminal colon cancer.”

“Love is like a mountain with many peaks and each new passion brings in a different view. Don't be afraid to love again and again...there are better horizons waiting. Climb until you find your perfect sky.”

“Though death might still the show, life would be the most critiqued act of our existence. Own your stage.”

“If you are the one perfect person in an imperfect world, you are flawed.”

“If wishes were grains of sand, the world would be a desert.”

“What we gain in the world, we lose in the world, forgotten in death. We must rather fancy what we brought into the world, for therein lives our story, our legend.”

“The man who has never been disappointed has never understood happiness, the man who has never been anxious has never learned patience, the man who has never been depressed will never know ecstasy.”

“Good deeds may not lead to heaven...still do deeds that make you feel like you are in there already.”

“Authors are the closest thing man would come to understanding God. It is a remarkable thing to conjure up a life and create its story.”

“The bad news is, our past defines us. However, the good news is, our future will someday be a part of that past.”