Joseph Bruchac Quotes

Over the years, I found myself traveling parts of the Lewis and Clark Trail, putting my hands in the river where they set out from St. Louis, viewing the Great Falls of Montana, standing by the same Pacific Ocean they saw with such joy.

The ultimate camping trip was the Lewis and Clark expedition.

In the 7th grade, I made a 20-foot long mural of the Lewis and Clark Trail while we were studying that in history because I knew I wasn't going to be able to spit back the names and the dates and all that stuff on a test.

The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight. These men were very kind.

I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind.

When I was seven years old, I fell in love with a series published by Bobbs-Merrill called 'The Childhood of Famous Americans.' In it, historical figures like Clara Barton, Nancy Hanks, Elias Howe, Patrick Henry, and dozens more came to life for me as children.

I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing' was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist in Peter Hatcher. When I reached the fourth grade, I made the leap to science fiction and never looked back.

I seemed to have been born reading.

Some people argue we should solve all the problems on Earth before going off the planet, but that's like telling Lewis and Clark to stay put until the rest of the East was settled. No way.

I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader - I have seen everything from the sublime to the ridiculous by her bed, from Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard to Barbara Cartland and James Patterson) taking me to get my library card when I was four and not yet at school.

I have very positive memories of reading biographies of unusual Americans as a child.

I read a great deal as a child. A lot of children go through a phase of reading in a literally voracious way. It is their primary imaginative activity. Maybe that's an experience which is not so common any more with the presence of television in every home.

Christopher Columbus discovered America in a blue-and-white sailor shirt, and since then, men have been wearing blue and white shirts.

I grew up actually reading 'The Hobbit,' not 'The Lord of the Rings.' I loved 'The Hobbit' growing up.

You can always say that it was scarce dollars when Lewis and Clark wanted to go to the West Coast and explore the West. And people complained about it, I understand, from a reading of the history books.

For a whole year in elementary school, when the class marched down to the school library every week, I would refuse to return my book. I would just check it out again and again. Every week. For a whole year. The object of my fourth-grade filibuster was 'D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.'

My parents are both intellectuals and readers; my mother would take me to the library every few days from before I was one year old.

Because I never attended elementary schools of any kind, I missed most of the books that were popular with other kids my age. There was an exception, however, which was 'Harry Potter.' My grandmother gave me the first book when I was about 13, and I read it, then read all the rest.

The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark.

Slowly but without question - and Presidents' Day is only one example - Americans are forgetting and ignoring the men and events that have made this nation great.

For a while I got into the South Pacific theater of World War II. I read "American Caesar" by William Manchester, the biography of General MacArthur. Because of that I ended up reading "Tales of the South Pacific" by James Michener and then because of that reading his "Hawaii." That is what happens.

The only thing Abner Doubleday ever started was the Civil War.

I don't think about age groups when I write, although I think if I know I'm writing for Children I'll be a bit more ambitious, and think more about every word, because I know that they pay closer attention when they read than adults do.

I don't [even] know the number of books on Abraham Lincoln. Ten thousand, twelve thousand? I have seen various numbers. It seems like every generation is always trying to come to terms with Lincoln.

Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.