155 Quotes by Gary Paulsen

But life has a way of pulling the rug out from under you just when you need it least, which is what they like to call growing, I guess, but as far as I’m concerned you can have it. It seems like everything they call growing up has to jerk your guts out and just about wreck you and I’ve never been able to understand why that’s supposed to be good for you.

None of that used to be in Brian and now it was a part of him, a changed part of him, a grown part of him, and the two things, his mind and his body, had come together as well, had made a connection with each other that he didn’t quite understand.

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.

Whoever says youth is the best time in your life has cash in hand and can’t remember being poor.

He could not at first leave the fire.

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.

The person who reads can bail, but the person who doesn’t fails.

It’s just that those things don’t seem to have the weight, the measureless beauty of countless sunsets and dawns, the simple grace and clear glory of nature.

The essence of war is insanity. Destruction, death, women widowed, children orphaned, lands plundered, property destroyed, lives decimated – it’s all bad.