113 Quotes by 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.

There were guys who prayed at Tarawa,′ said Ishmael. ‘They still got killed, Mother. Just like the guys who didn’t pray. It didn’t matter either way.

The trick was to live here without hating yourself because all around you was hatred.

I’m not an urban person.

I don’t feel anything either way. No feeling about it comes to me – it’s not something I have a choice about. Isn’t a feeling like that supposed to happen? I can’t make a feeling like that up, can I? Maybe God just chooses certain people, and the rest of us – we can’t feel Him.

I have been trying to think clearly about everything and to use all this distance to advantage. And here is what I’ve discovered. I don’t love you, Ishmael.

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 accepting the inevitability of it.

The place felt sinister, though. Your imagination can get the better of you where a road ends against a forest.

For them it might stave off what he could not help but see with clarity: that the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty.