Quotes from Gary Paulsen

I was raised on farms by people who didn't have Wal-Mart. They had to make their own sleds, harnesses, clothing, etc.

Yes, I've been in an igloo. They're surprisingly cozy and warm - small, though, you can't really stand up in some.

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

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 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.

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

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

Years ago, when I was writing westerns, other writers who were friends of mine wanted me to collaborate with them. And it just didn't work.

The maximum expression of running dogs is the Iditarod. You enter a state of primitive exaltation, and you never return. You're never normal again.

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.

My folks were drunks, and I had a rough childhood - really rough - in fact, rougher than I thought about.

Humans are the big thing that cause damage in life - in war or whatever - and if I can get away from that and into a wilderness situation, I'm OK. You can more or less live on your own merit.

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.

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

Everything was green, so green it went into him.

never say never

I am full of tough hope

The burning eyes did not come back, but memories did, came flooding in. The words. Always the words. Divorce.

He had learned this: Nothing that lived, nothing that walked or crawled or flew or swam or slithered or oozed—nothing, not one thing on God's earth wanted to die. No matter what people thought or said about chickens or fish or cattle—they all wanted to live.

Because every day in my journal I write down the best thing that's happened to me. And today it's you. When When Johanna said that, I felt light, warm in that spot just above my stomach where it usually feels clenched and tight.

moose was a moose. There

If his mother hadn't begun to see him and forced the divorce, Brian wouldn't be here now. He

And he's never met anyone like Harris, his unruly daredevil of a cousin.

He was not the same. The plane passing changed him, the disappointment cut him down and made him new. He was not the same and would never be again like he had been. That was one of the true things, the new things. And the other one was that he would not die, he would not let death in again.