Hatchet Quotes

“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, 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, 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

“That's all it took to solve problems - just sense.”
― Gary Paulsen, 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, Hatchet

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

“the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn’t work.”
― 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

“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 tough hope.”
― 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

“I am full of tough hope”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“He could see it now. Oh, yes, all as he ran in the sun, his legs liquid springs.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“Everything was green, so green it went into him.”
― 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

“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”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“moose was a moose. There”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

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

“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.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn’t work.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“There were these things to do.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“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. He”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“If his mother hadn’t begun to see him and forced the divorce, Brian wouldn’t be here now. He”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“I am not the same, he thought. I see, I hear differently. He did not know when the change started, but it was there; when a sound came to him now he didn’t just hear it but would know the sound. He would swing and look at it—a breaking twig, a movement of air—and know the sound as if he somehow could move his mind back down the wave of sound to the source. He could know what the sound was before he quite realized he had heard it. And when he saw something—a bird moving a wing inside a bush or a ripple on the water—he would truly see that thing, not just notice it as he used to notice things in the city. He would see all parts of it; see the whole wing, the feathers, see the color of the feathers, see the bush, and the size and shape and color of its leaves. He would see the way the light moved with the ripples on the water and see that the wind made the ripples and which way that wind had to blow to make the ripples move in that certain way.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“small pieces and fed the fire. I will not let you go out, he said to himself, to the flames—not ever. And so he sat through a long part of the day, keeping the flames even, eating from his stock of raspberries, leaving to drink from the lake when he was thirsty. In the afternoon, toward the evening, with his face smoke smeared and his skin red from the heat, he finally began to think ahead to what he needed to do. He would need a large woodpile to get through the night. It would be almost impossible to find wood in the dark so he had to have it all in and cut and stacked before the sun went down. Brian made certain the fire was banked with new wood, then went out of the shelter and searched for a good fuel supply. Up the hill from the campsite the same windstorm that left him a place to land the plane—had that only been three, four days ago?—had dropped three large white pines across each other. They were dead now, dry and filled with weathered dry dead limbs”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“In measured time forty-seven days had passed since the crash. Forty-two days, he thought, since he had died and been born as the new Brian.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet