Gary Paulsen

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Look at Inuit clothing. Their stuff still works better than Cabela's. I've made my own parkas, mukluks, footgear, and it is good to 60 degrees below zero. All I did was copy the patterns that came down from the Inuits.”

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

“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.”

“Why do I read?I just can't help myself.I read to learn and to grow, to laugh and to be motivated.I read to understand things I've never been exposed to.I read when I'm crabby, when I've just said monumentally dumb things to the people I love.I read for strength to help me when I feel broken, discouraged, and afraid.I read when I'm angry at the whole world.I read when everything is going right.I read to find hope.I read because I'm made up not just of skin and bones, of sights, feelings, and a deep need for chocolate, but I'm also made up of words.Words describe my thoughts and what's hidden in my heart.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 tried to contain myself... but I escaped!”

“In sailing, I single-hand, and I want to do the Horn. The Horn is the maximum expression of sailing, the way the Iditarod is the maximum expression of running dogs. It's not to write about it; it's to experience the maximum thing.”

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

“This is the final book about Brian”

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

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

“I have a pickup truck. And I prefer to be with dogs or on my sailboat than in a car - actually, more than any other place on Earth.”

“My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“You're never the same after you run the Iditarod, and I still lust to go out and run with dogs, even though I know that I shouldn't. But I'd give just about anything to be able to do it again. To see the horizon again from the back of a dog team would be wonderful.”