Brian's Return Quotes

“...You can take the man out of the woods, but you can't take the woods out of the man.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“This is the final book about Brian”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“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.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“Never assume anything, expect the unexpected, be ready for everything all the time. And”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“It wasn’t easy at first. He had expected difficulties with his parents and he wasn’t mistaken. His mother had a terrible fear of the bush—which had developed in the weeks when he had disappeared and she had had to believe he was dead. They talked many nights before she relented. He was older now, more seasoned, and she knew that. He had done well the past summer, when he had returned with Derek. With Caleb’s help, his mother came around. “How will you find the Smallhorns?” she asked. “The pilot, the man who flew me out, will know where they are.” Brian had kept the pilot’s name. The man had a one-plane operation working out of International Falls, on the Minnesota-Canada border, and Brian called. “The Smallhorns? Yeah—they’re up in the Williams Lake area in a fish camp but I’m not due to go up there until fall. I’m booked solid all summer with fishing charters. I can’t take the time to run you up there.” “How about getting me close? I can make my own way in a canoe.” “Just a minute.” Brian heard papers shuffling as the pilot went through his records. “Yeah, here. I’m due to take a couple of guys fishing in ten days. We’re going to the Granite Lake area and with my fuel I can take you maybe another hundred miles. That’s still a hundred miles short of the Smallhorns’ camp but it’s all chain lakes up there and you can do it without any really bad portages. I’ll give you a good map. How heavy is your gear?” “Maybe two hundred pounds, plus me and a canoe. Can you haul a canoe?” “Sure. On the floats. We’re taking one canoe and I can fit yours on the other float. When are you figuring on coming out?” “I’m not … sure.” “I’m due to make a supply run to them in the fall before trapping”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“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.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“Hello to you too, he peed. Then he got into the canoe and slid off.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“small”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“Cities like London and Paris were founded and settled first by beaver.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“There. I've poked my leg, rolled down a bank and been hit in the head with the canoe.
All simple things. All fixable things.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“But it was more than just being picky. In the end he was keeping his sanity, arranging his life. At first the List was a guide from the dream to reality but when he had perfected the List he started to gather the items on it, ordering from catalogs in the backs of hunting and fishing magazines. His mother knew he was ordering but she was involved in other things and left him mostly to himself, and as he received items he put them in his room and she didn’t question him.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“It made him believe, made him know, that there was something bigger than he was, something bigger than everybody, bigger than all. He thought it must mean something, had to mean something, but he could not think what. Three arrows of light. Three-Arrow. Maybe a name, maybe a direction. Later, after he came back and was trying to understand all that had happened, he read that early Inuits in the North saw the northern lights and believed them to be the souls of dead children dancing. Brian knew it was really the ionosphere ionizing but he still wanted it to be the souls of dead children playing, wanted it to mean more, and it was the same with this sunset.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“It came to a head in of all places the front entry-way of Mackey’s Pizza Den. Brian had become aloof, sometimes unaware of the social life around him, and without knowing it had upset a boy named Carl Lammers. Carl was a football player, a large boy—his nickname was Hulk—and also a bully who envied Brian’s celebrity. Brian didn’t know him. Apparently Carl thought Brian had said something bad about him and he was coming out of Mackey’s Pizza Den just as Brian was walking in with a boy and girl from school. The boy was small and thin—he was named Haley—and the girl was named Susan and she thought Brian was great and wanted to know him better and had invited him for a pizza so she could talk to him. Haley had been standing nearby and thought the invitation included him, to Susan’s disappointment.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“Let’s go down to the mall and play some video games,” they would say. Or play softball, or ride bicycles or, or, or. And he would try. But sports and shooting electronic bullets or rays at imaginary enemies that clomped across screens seemed silly, pale in comparison to what his real life had been like: having moose attack him, living on the edge of starving, living only because his thinking, his brain, kept him alive. He couldn’t get into the games, couldn’t believe in them. It was the same with the people who made up extreme sports just to prove they could do it. Rock climbers, “radical” skateboarders, wilderness programs that were supposed to toughen up city kids—rich kids—and make them better people. All games.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return

“Oh … ,” she moaned.”
― Gary Paulsen, Brian's Return