“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, quote from Hatchet
“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, quote from Hatchet
“And the last thought he had that morning as he closed his eyes was: I hope the tornado hit the moose.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“That's all it took to solve problems - just sense.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“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, quote from Hatchet
“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, quote from Hatchet
“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, quote from Hatchet
“Things seemed to go back and forth between reality and imagination--except that it was all reality.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“Brian looked back and for a moment felt afraid because the wolf was so... so right. He knew Brian, knew him and owned him and chose not to do anything to him. But the fear moved then, moved away,and Brian knew the wolf for what it was - another part of the woods, another part of all of it.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“He could see it now. Oh, yes, all as he ran in the sun, his legs liquid springs.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn’t work.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“It was a strange feeling, holding the rifle. It somehow removed him from everything around him. Without the rifle he had to fit in, to be part of it all, to understand it and use it - the woods, all of it. With the rifle, suddenly, he didn't have to know, did not have to be afraid or understand. He didn't have to get close to a foolbird to kill it - didn't have to know how it would stand if he didn't look at it and moved off to the side.
The rifle changed him, the minute he picked it up, and he wasn't sure he liked the change much.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“Not hope that he would be rescued--that was gone. But hope in his knowledge. Hope in the fact that he could learn and survive and take care of himself. Tough hope, he thought that night. I am full of though hope.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“Everything was green, so green it went into him.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“I am full of tough hope”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“Maybe it was always that way, discoveries happened because they needed to happen.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“He moved to the trees. Where the bark was peeling from the trunks it lifted in tiny tendrils, almost fluffs. Brian plucked some of them loose, rolled them in his fingers. They seemed flammable, dry and nearly powdery. He pulled and twisted bits off the trees, packing them in one hand while he picked them with the other, picking and gathering until he had a wad close to the size of a baseball. Then he went back into the shelter and arranged the ball of birchbark peelings at the base of the black rock. As an afterthought he threw in the remains of the twenty-dollar bill. He struck and a stream of sparks fell into the bark and quickly died. But this time one spark fell on one small hair of dry bark—almost a thread of bark—and seemed to glow a bit brighter before it died. The material had to be finer. There had to be a soft and incredibly fine nest for the sparks. I must make a home for the sparks, he thought. A perfect home or they won’t stay, they won’t make fire. He started ripping the bark, using his fingernails at first, and when that didn’t work he used the sharp edge of the hatchet, cutting the bark in thin slivers, hairs so fine they were almost not there. It was painstaking work, slow work, and he stayed with it for over two hours. Twice he stopped for a handful of berries and once to go to the lake for a drink. Then back to work, the sun on his back, until at last he had a ball of fluff as big as a grapefruit—dry birchbark fluff.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“The memory was like a knife cutting into him. Slicing deep into him with hate. The”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“Well, he’d actually never heard anybody say it. But he felt that it should be true. There”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“If his mother hadn’t begun to see him and forced the divorce, Brian wouldn’t be here now. He”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“He could not at first leave the fire. It”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“He was out of food, but he could look tomorrow and he could build a signal fire tomorrow and get more wood tomorrow . . . The”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“about four inches down, he suddenly came into a small chamber in the cool-damp sand and there lay eggs, many eggs, almost perfectly round eggs the size of table tennis balls, and he laughed then because he knew. It had been a turtle.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“It must have been a snapper”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“He widened the hole with his finger and looked inside.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“No, not secrets so much as just the Secret. What he knew and had not told anybody, what he knew about his mother that had caused the divorce, what he knew, what he knew--- the Secret.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“The burning eyes did not come back, but memories did, came flooding in. The words. Always the words. Divorce.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“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. He had to keep hoping.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
“There were these things to do.”
― Gary Paulsen, quote from Hatchet
Gary Paulsen
Born place: in Minneapolis, Minnesota, The United States
Born date May 17, 1939
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“I may not have known much about pregnancies but I knew that you couldn’t have a son or a daughter without actually doing it first. The priests at school had once muttered something to the effect that when a mummy and a daddy loved each other very much, they lay close together and the Holy Spirit descended upon them to create the miracle of new life. (Charles, in his one attempt at a man-to-man talk with me, had put it rather differently. ‘Get her kit off,’ he said. ‘Play with her tits a bit, because the ladies love that. Then just stick your cock in her pussy and ram it in and out a bit. Don’t hang around too long in there – it’s not a bloody train station. Just do your business and get on with your day.’ It’s no wonder he managed to secure so many wives, the old romantic.) I”
― John Boyne, quote from The Heart's Invisible Furies
“were your men treated?” Ashby shrugged. “There were so many from so many different countries, I don’t think we stood out. When we got back, the palace staff looked like they wanted to spit on us, but the people down below knew nothing of our arrival. Nary a word about it.” “Thank you, Ashby,” Owen said, finishing his work. He stood and buckled his scabbard around his waist. “So what you’re saying is the kingdom is vulnerable.”
― Jeff Wheeler, quote from The King's Traitor
“Just because you're scared to like someone doesn't make the like go away.”
― Ashley Herring Blake, quote from Suffer Love
“Under the Fugitive Persons Act, those who escape from service are to be captured and returned, anywhere they are found in the United States, slave state or free. All law enforcement agencies are obliged to assist in these operations when called upon (as, indeed, “all good citizens” are so obliged), but it is the US Marshals Service that is specifically charged with the job. This law was passed in the ancient year of 1793 under its old name, but it’s been updated repeatedly: strengthened in 1850, reinforced in 1861, revised and strengthened a half dozen times since. When, in 1875, Congress at last ended slavery in the nation’s capital, the slaveholding powers were appeased by the raising of fees for obstruction. When President Roosevelt, in 1935, proposed the creation of a “comprehensive regulatory framework” for the plantations (and the Bureau of Labor Practices to enforce it), he quieted howling southern senators with a sweeping immunity bill, shielding US marshals from zealous northern prosecutors. Tit for tat. Give and take. Negotiation and conciliation. Compromise. It’s how the Union survives. People”
― Ben H. Winters, quote from Underground Airlines
“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from الحرب والسلم [War and Peace]
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Methuselah's Childre...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
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