Gary Paulsen

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

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.

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 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.

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__ be in books. The book needs you.

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

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.

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'm a teller of stories. I put bloody skins on my back and dance around the fire, and I say what the hunt was like. It's not erudite; it's not intellectual. 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 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.

Adults are locked into car payments and divorces and work. They haven't got time to think fresh.

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

I think that what computers have done is just disastrous to the language.

She was brilliant and joyous and she believed- probably correctly- that libraries contain the answers to all things, to everything, and that if you can't find the information you seek in the library, then such information probably doesn't exist in this or any parallel universe now or ever to be known. She was thoughtful and kind and she always believed the best of everybody. She was, above all else, a master librarian and she knew where to find any book on any subject in the shortest possible time. And she was wonderfully unhinged.

All the luck in the world has to come every year, in every part of every year, or there is not a harvest and then the luck, the bad luck will come and everything we are, all that we can ever be, all the Einsteins and babies and love and hate, all the joy and sadness and sex and wanting and liking and disliking, all the soft summer breezes on cheeks and first snowflakes, all the Van Goghs and Rembrandts and Mozarts and Mahlers and Thomas Jeffersons and Lincolns and Ghandis and Jesus Christs, all the Cleopatras and lovemaking and riches and achievements and progress, all of that, every single damn thing that we are or ever will be is dependent on six inches of topsoil and the fact that the rain comes when it's needed and does not come when it is not needed; everything, every...single...thing comes with that luck.

I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me. The sea.

...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...