Gary Paulsen quotes:

I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker and tell stories about the stuff I've been through. And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.

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

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.

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.

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

He had to keep thinking of them because if he forgot them and did not think of them they might forget about him. And he had to keep hoping.

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

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

She was beautiful in a way that only wild things can be beautiful.

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.

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.

Read like a wolf eats.

Running with dogs is like dancing with winter

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

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.

...this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath...

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.

A book is a friend. You can never have too many.

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

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

I tried to contain myself... but I escaped!

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.

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.

Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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