Gary Paulsen Quotes

My name is Brian Robeson and I am thirteen years old and I am alone in the north woods of Canada.

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve 'This Side of Wild' Excerpt

Just as bad things could snowball, Brian found that good things could come fast as well.

He reached now and ran one of Gretchen’s soft ears through his gnarled, bent fingers, like silk through barbwire. “And I never saw it until I started with Gretchen. Got her to sit one day. The same day, she looked a long time at me and at a piece of cookie” — and here she perked up, ears more alert with the word “cookie” — “in my hand, and she saw the cookie and my eyes and then she sat. Clean and down. As much as if she’d said, ‘I’ll sit and then you give me that piece of cookie,’ and she did and I did and it was the first time I knew I had been wrong all along. I never trained one animal. Not once . . .” “They trained you.

In a real situation, like when I was here before, there were things wrong — going wrong. The plane didn’t land and set me on the shore. It crashed. A man was dead. I was hurt. I didn’t know anything. Nothing at all. I was, maybe, close to death and now we’re out here going la-de-da, I’ve got a fish; la-de-da, there are some more berries.

He had forgotten the most important thing about living in the wilderness, the one thing he'd thought he would never forget-expect the unexpected. What you didn't think would get you, would get you. Plan on the worst and be happy when it didn't come.

But it was a mental thing. He had gotten depressed thinking about how they hadn't found him yet, and when he was busy and had something to do the depression seemed to leave.

But the beauty of the woods, the incredible joy of it is too alluring to be ignored, and I could not stand to be away from it — indeed, still can't — and so I ran dogs simply to run dogs; to be in and part of the forest, the woods

But I’m your brother.” Daniel sounded genuinely wounded. “You,” she announced, “are a turd in the punch bowl of life.

"I wish I had a dollar for every hour I've spent in the library," he always says. I have to agree- we'd probably never have to worry about money again.

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.

Which Brian had done. They had taken off and that was the last of the conversation. There had been the initial excitement, of course. He had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting in the copilot’s seat with all the controls right there in front of him, all the instruments in his face as the plane clawed for altitude, jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off, had been interesting and exciting. But in five minutes they had leveled off at six thousand feet and headed northwest and from then on the pilot had been silent, staring out the front, and the drone of the engine had been all that was left. The drone and the sea of green trees that lay before the plane’s nose and flowed to the horizon, spread with lakes, swamps, and wandering streams and rivers.

Simple. Keep it simple. I am Brian Robeson. I have been in a plane crash. I am going to find some food. I am going to find some berries.

I have seen their humor and anger expressed in natural terms and learned more about them as dogs and not just extensions of human training.

Listen to me, he thought. If I were talking out loud, I’d be whining. Derek gets hit and I act like I’m the one getting messed up.