Andrew Shoemaker > Andrew's Quotes

“So this summer, this first summer when he was allowed to have “visitation rights” with his father, with the divorce only one month old, Brian was heading north. His father was a mechanical engineer who had designed or invented a new drill bit for oil drilling, a self-cleaning, self-sharpening bit. He was working in the oil fields of Canada, up on the tree line where the tundra started and the forests ended. Brian was riding up from New York with some drilling equipment—it was lashed down in the rear of the plane next to a fabric bag the pilot had called a survival pack, which had emergency supplies in case they had to make an emergency landing—that had to be specially made in the city, riding in the bushplane with the pilot named Jim or Jake or something who had turned out to be an all right guy, letting him fly and all.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

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

“belly”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“had”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“10”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“screamed”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“Ugly, he thought. Very, very ugly.

And he was, at that moment, almost overcome with self-pity. He was dirty and starving and bitten and hurt and lonely and ugly and afraid and so completely miserable that it was like being in a pit, a dark, deep pit with no way out.

He sat back on the bank and fought crying. Then let it come and cried for perhaps three, four minutes. Long tears, self-pity tears, wasted tears.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“aches”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“mosquitos.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“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. When he sat alone in the darkness and cried and was done, all done with it, nothing had changed.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“events were burned into his memory and so he used them to remember time,”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“full of life. Birds, insects—there was a constant hum and song.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“them up and ate them, which helped”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“I am Brian Robeson.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“a”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“Mistakes. Food had to be protected. While he was in the lake trying to clear his eyes the skunk went ahead and dug up the rest of the turtle eggs and ate every one. Licked all the shells clean and couldn’t have cared less that Brian was thrashing around in the water like a dying carp. The skunk had found food and was taking it and Brian was paying for a lesson. Protect food and have a good shelter. Not just a shelter to keep the wind and rain out, but a shelter to protect, a shelter to make him safe. The day after the skunk he set about making a good place to live. The basic idea had been good, the place for his shelter was right, but he just hadn’t gone far enough. He’d been lazy—but now he knew the second most important thing about nature, what drives nature. Food was first, but the work for the food went on and on. Nothing in nature was lazy. He had tried to take a shortcut and paid for it with his turtle eggs—which he had come to like more”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“hurt”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“Mistakes. In his mental journal he listed them to tell his father, listed all the mistakes. He had made a new bow, with slender limbs and a more fluid, gentle pull, but could not hit the fish though he sat in the water and was, in the end, surrounded by a virtual cloud of small fish. It was infuriating. He would pull the bow back, set the arrow just above the water, and when the fish was no more than an inch away release the arrow.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“smoke”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“Things seemed to go back and forth between reality and imagination--except that it was all reality.”
― Gary Paulsen, 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, 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, Hatchet

“Maybe it was always that way, discoveries happened because they needed to happen.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“The burning eyes did not come back, but memories did, came flooding in. The words. Always the words. Divorce.”
― Gary Paulsen, 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, Hatchet

“But perhaps more than his body was the change in his mind, or in the way he was--was becoming. I am not the same, he thought. I see, I hear differently.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“Well, he’d actually never heard anybody say it. But he felt that it should be true. There”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet