Gary Paulsen quotes

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Book #Reading

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Patience #Thinking #Waiting

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Book #Light #Smell

Read like a wolf eats.
-- Gary Paulsen

I tried to contain myself... but I escaped!
-- Gary Paulsen

#Freedom

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

#Sleep #Night

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

#Book

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Book #Writing #Kids

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Sorry #Dark #Long

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Ocean #Light #Air

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Giving Up #Talking #Way

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

#Morning #Eye #Moose

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

#Bail #Failing #Persons

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

#Reality #Imagination

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Running #Animal #Unique

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Dream #Taken #Games

School didn't work for me. I hated it.
-- Gary Paulsen

#School #Hated

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

#Divorce #Thinking #Car

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Hurt #Dark #Self

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

#Problem #Solve

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Book #Thoughtful #Library

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

#Matter #Problem #Trouble

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Crazy #People #Insane

Books make me feel safe. Books make me feel normal.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Book #Safe #Normal

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

#Rivers #Dip #Buckets

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Song #Stupid #Reading

...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...
-- Gary Paulsen

#Beautiful #Lakes #Perfect

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.
-- Gary Paulsen

#Thinking #Might #Forget