David Guterson Quotes

At the end of the day, my life isn't about other people's work. I've got to stop giving stuff away. I've got my own stories to tell, and a great need to tell them. I've got these images, these thoughts in my head, and I need to find a way to cope with them.

I think all our characters are an amalgam of people we know in our world and ourselves.

As artists we have an extraordinary and rare privilege to tell the stories of our people, our land, our culture. They grip us, tear us apart, and put us back together. We are our stories.

Music feels like a six sense to me, and it's never been just a hobby. It's something that I have to do to breathe. It's an extension of who I am.

I'm really interested in stories about identity - who I am now versus who I used to be.

I still feel like I have a lot of growing up to do 'til I find the voice. Everybody has their own voice and their own thing they want to say to the world.

Whether you want to entertain or to provoke, to break hearts or reassure them, what you bring to your writing must consist of your longings and disappointments.

I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

I have done a lot of work internally to find out who I am, what voice Eamonn Walker has and how he wants to put it out there.

People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for.

The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.

I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.

I have to have some of my voice because I have my own experiences that I lived through.

I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.

I want to be as honest as I can about the things I've been through - the sorrows and joys, victories and defeats - and to use those experiences as a well to draw from. Hopefully, the songs that result from that kind of writing will be songs that mean something to others.

I don't even know what my voice is to this day.

My best songs come from a place outside myself.

I'm actually beginning to believe that there is something in common among all of my characters. I'm not sure what it is exactly. But I guess that something is me.

You are always drawing from your personal life and using your imagination to fill in the blanks.

Cry Baby is very close to my heart. I feel like I am her in a lot of ways. I want to continue making music from her perspective.

No matter what writers say, most stories are about ourselves. The facts might change a little, but not much.

When I was a kid growing up, I always thought I would be a journalist, and I thought, you know, I'd cover stories about other people, and we're always taught never to make the story about yourself.

Every song I write is autobiographical and is about people, and that's one of the things that gets complicated. You have to decide where's your place as a songwriter.

The writing process really became natural when it was real and from my heart, and I was exposed.