Snow Falling on Cedars Quotes

“Accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“I know you'll think this is crazy, but all I want to do is hold you, and I think that if you'll let me do that just for a few seconds, I can walk away, and never speak to you again.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“That the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“Ishmael gave himself to the writing of it, and as he did so he understood this, too: that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“The world was incomprehensibly intricate, and yet this forest made a simple sense in her heart that she felt nowhere else.

[S]he wanted only her own strawberry farm, the fragrance of the fields and the cedar trees, and to live simply in this place forever.

[S]he had fallen into loving him long before she knew herself, though it occurred to her now that she might never know herself, that perhaps no one ever does, that such a thing might not be possible.

[Y]ou should learn to say nothing that will cause you regret. You should not say what is not in your heart -- or what is only in your heart for a moment. But you know this -- silence is better.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“The snowfall obliterated the borders between the fields and made Kabuo Miyamoto's long-cherished seven acres indistinguishable from the land that surrounded them. All human claims to the landscape were superseded, made null and void by the snow. The world was one world, and the notion that a man might kill another over some small patch of it did not make sense.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“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...”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“We Japanese, on the other hand, know our egos are nothing. We bend our egos, all of the time, and that is where we differ. That is the fundamental difference, Hatsue. We bend our heads, we bow and are silent, because we understand that by ourselves alone, we are nothing at all, dust in a strong wind, while the 'hakujin' believes his aloneness is everything, his separateness is the foundation of his existence. He seeks and grasps, seeks and grasps for his separateness, while we seek union with the Greater Life--you must see that these are distinct paths we are travelling, Hatsue, the 'hakujin' and we Japanese" (p. 176).”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“His cynicism - a veteran's cynicism - was a thing that disturbed him all the time. It seemed to him after the war that the world was thoroughly altered. It was not even a thing you could explain to anybody, why it was that everything was folly. People appeared enormously foolish to him. He understood that they were only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids. He had seen the insides of jaggedly ripped-open dead people. He knew, for instance, what brains looked like spilling out of somebody's head. In the context of this, much of what went on in normal life seemed wholly and disturbingly ridiculous.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“He hoped it would snow recklessly and bring to the island the impossible winter purity, so rare and precious, he remembered fondly from his youth.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“[Ishmael] listened to the world turned silent by the snow; there was absolutely nothing to hear. The silence of the world roared steadily in his ears while he came to recognize that he did not belong here, he had no place in the tree any longer. Some much younger people should find this tree, hold to it tightly as their deepest secret as he and Hatsue had. 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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“I'd rather know I can trust you. So before you read what's in that thing, tell me a story that squares with its details and exonerate yourself in my eyes. Tell me the story you should have told the sheriff right off the bat, when it wasn't too late, when the truth might still have given you your freedom. When the truth might have done you some good.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“The prospect of death in autumn, she said, was irrelevant next to its happy recognition of its participation in the life of the tree itself.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“People appeared enormously foolish to him. He understood that they were only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“He had seen the insides of jaggedly ripped-open dead people. He knew, for instance, what brains looked like spilling out of somebody's head. In the context of this, much of what went on in normal life seemed wholly and disturbingly ridiculous.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“I'm an American,' Kabuo cut in. 'Just like anybody. Am I calling you a Nazi, you big Nazi bastard? I killed men who looked just like you - pig-fed German bastards. I've got their blood on my soul, Carl, and it doesn't wash off very easily. So don't you talk to me about Japs, you big Nazi son of a bitch.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“They don’t really matter,” said Ishmael. “None of those other things make 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.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“No one [Islanders] trod easily upon the emotions of another where the sea licked everywhere against an endless shoreline. And this was excellent and poor at the same time-excellent because it meant most people took care, poor because it meant an inbreeding of the spirit, too much held in, regret and silent brooding, a world whose inhabitants walked in trepidation, in fear of opening up...They could not speak freely because they were cornered: everywhere they turned there was water and more water, a limitless expanse of it in which to drown. They held their breath and walked with care, and this made them who they were inside, constricted and small, good neighbors.”
― David Guterson , Snow Falling on Cedars

“The trick was to live here without hating yourself because all around you was hatred.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“If disaster, so be it, they said to themselves. There was nothing to be done except what could be done. The rest -- like the salt water around them, which swallowed the snow without effort, remaining what it was implacably -- was out of their hands, beyond.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn’t find a way to do it.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“opinion, sir? You have not denied that my scenario is plausible. You have not denied that this premeditated murder might have happened in precisely the fashion I have just described, have you, Mr. Gillanders—have you?” “No, I haven’t,” Josiah said. “But—” “No further questions,”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars