Best 34 quotes of Gary Paulsen on MyQuotes

Adults are locked into car payments and divorces and work. They haven't got time to think fresh.

And the last thought he had that morning as he closed his eyes was: I hope the tornado hit the moose.

Books make me feel safe. Books make me feel normal.

Do what you can as you can. Trouble, problems, will come no matter what you do , and you must respond as they come.

He could not play the game without hope; could not play the game without a dream. They had taken it all away from him now, they had turned away from him and there was nothing for him now...He was alone and there was nothing for him.

He did not know how long it took, but later he looked back on this time of crying in the corner of the dark cave and thought of it as when he learned the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn't work. It wasn't just that it was wrong to do, or that it was considered incorrect. It was more than that--it didn't work.

I am happiest in the brush and by myself - whether that's the woods of northern Minnesota or the wilds of Alaska behind a dogteam, picking through the foothills of the mountains by my ranch in New Mexico on horseback, or on the ship of my sailboat on the Pacific - so I guess it made sense to me that both Brian and Samuel would find their challenges and adventures, if that's what you call them, in the woods.

I can't rightly say where deciding to write about the American Revolution came from; I had bits and pieces of information about the war and about the country at that time that I'd collected over the years and, of course, I'm comfortable in the woods, so, finally, it just all feel into place.

If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books. The book needs you.

Initially, he worried that he might be going crazy. But then he decided if you felt you were crazy you weren't really crazy because he had heard somewhere that crazy people didn't know they were insane.

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.

I read like a wolf eats. I read myself to sleep every night.

I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me. The sea.

It was as though I had been dying of thirst and the librarian had handed me a five gallon bucket of water. I drank and drank. The only reason I am here and not in prison is because of that woman. I was a loser, but she showed me the power of reading.

I've been reading and researching various aspects of history - Dickens' London, Nelson's sea battles, Magellan's nautical explorations, the weapons and battles and key figures of the American Civil War - for most of my life. I pick up a book here or there or see a documentary or talk with an expert in the subject, and my curiosity about the one area of study and discovery always leads to another.

Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I've got left, I intend to write artistic books - for kids - because they're still open to new ideas.

Personal inspection at zero altitude. The stories come from my life - if not my own experiences, then about topics and subjects that interest me.

School didn't work for me. I hated it.

She was brilliant and joyous and she believed- probably correctly- that libraries contain the answers to all things, to everything, and that if you can't find the information you seek in the library, then such information probably doesn't exist in this or any parallel universe now or ever to be known. She was thoughtful and kind and she always believed the best of everybody. She was, above all else, a master librarian and she knew where to find any book on any subject in the shortest possible time. And she was wonderfully unhinged.

Stories are like a river that flows - you dip a bucket in it

That's all it took to solve problems - just sense.

The essence of war is insanity. Destruction, death, women widowed, children orphaned, lands plundered, property destroyed, lives decimated - it's all bad.

The person who reads can bail, but the person who doesn't fails.

Things seemed to go back and forth between reality and imagination--except that it was all reality.

This is going to be murder," Fransic whispered to Mr. Trimes. "Pure murder." "I'm glad to see your confidence returning, Mr. Tucket. Just a few minutes ago you were ready to give up. Now you're talking about killing him." "I meant it the other way." "Oh.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as prey—it is a lessening thought—but the truth is that in our arrogance and so-called knowledge we forget that we are not unique. We are part of nature as much as other animals, and some animals—sharks, fever-bearing mosquitoes, wolves and bear, to name but a few—perceive us as a food source, a meat supply, and simply did not get the memo about how humans are superior. It can be shocking, humbling, painful, very edifying and sometimes downright fatal to run into such an animal.

We make a mistake in thinking we own pets - the animals open their lives up and make us a part of them.

When he sat alone in the darkness and cried and was done, all done with it, nothing had changed. His leg still hurt, it was still dark, he was still alone and the self-pity had accomplished nothing.

Words are alive--when I've found a story that I love, I read it again and again, like playing a favorite song over and over. Reading isn't passive--I enter the story with the characters, breathe their air, feel their frustrations, scream at them to stop when they're about to do something stupid, cry with them, laugh with them. Reading for me, is spending time with a friend. A book is a friend. You can never have too many.

All right, he thought, take one thing at a time. Just one thing. I poked my leg with an arrow. There. Good. I pulled the arrow out. My leg still works. It must not have been a broadhead because it didn't go in very deep. Good. My tent collapsed. There. Another thing. I'm in a tent and it collapsed. I just have to find the front zipper and get out and climb up the bank. Easy now, easy. Something hit me on the head. What? Something big that thunked. The canoe. The wind picked up the canoe and it hit me.

All the luck in the world has to come every year, in every part of every year, or there is not a harvest and then the luck, the bad luck will come and everything we are, all that we can ever be, all the Einsteins and babies and love and hate, all the joy and sadness and sex and wanting and liking and disliking, all the soft summer breezes on cheeks and first snowflakes, all the Van Goghs and Rembrandts and Mozarts and Mahlers and Thomas Jeffersons and Lincolns and Ghandis and Jesus Christs, all the Cleopatras and lovemaking and riches and achievements and progress, all of that, every single damn thing that we are or ever will be is dependent on six inches of topsoil and the fact that the rain comes when it's needed and does not come when it is not needed; everything, every...single...thing comes with that luck.

He had forgotten the most important thing about living in the wilderness, the one thing he'd thought he would never forget-expect the unexpected. What you didn't think would get you, would get you. Plan on the worst and be happy when it didn't come.

The book is that is the good one is Woodsong and we are trying to finish it.

There. I've poked my leg, rolled down a bank and been hit in the head with the canoe. All simple things. All fixable things.