Michelle Paver Quotes

“There's always a choice,' said Torak, and walked backward off the cliff.”

— Michelle Paver

“Sometimes there's no warning. Nothing at all.”

— Michelle Paver

Vengeance burns,Torak." said Fin-Kedinn as the river bore him away. "It burns your heart. It makes the pain worse. Dont let that happen to you.

— Michelle Paver

"So I've got to find a mountiain that nobody's ever seen. And work out the answer to a riddle that nobody's ever solved. And kill a bear that nobody can fight."
Renn sucked in her breath. "You've go to try."

— Michelle Paver

“Have you forgotten," she said in a furious whisper, "that he nearly killed us? That he threw my quiver in the stream, and threatened to snap my bow?"
It was unclear which she considered worse: threatening them or her bow.”

— Michelle Paver

“You cannot go and warn him," Saeunn said sternly. "It is too late. You would never find him."
"I know," said Renn without turning her head.
To herself she added, But I've still got to try.”

— Michelle Paver

Moving closer to the edge, I peered down. The water was glassy green, extraordinarily clear. I experienced the feeling I sometimes get when I'm on a bridge or a railway platform. Rationally, you know that you've no intention of stepping off the bridge or the platform - or this ice floe - but you're aware that you could, and that the only thing stopping you is your will.

— Michelle Paver

“A man crawls into a tomb to die. A boy crawls in to live. You think that's chance?”

— Michelle Paver

“If you're warm enough when you set out, you're wearing too many clothes.”

— Michelle Paver

“How odd, that light should prevent one from seeing.”

— Michelle Paver

“Run, Torak! The bear ... is ... possessed ...”

— Michelle Paver

Wolf hated the female tailless. He'd hated her from the first moment he'd smelt her, as she pointed the long claw that flies at his pack brother. What a thing to do! As if Tall Tail-less was some kind of prey! ... Didn't she know that he was the lead wolf? She was so sharp and disrespectful when she yipped at him in tail-less talk. Why didn't Tall Tail-less just snarl and chase her away?

— Michelle Paver

“Choas errupted amoung the watchers. They didn't think it was over at all. "He cheated! He used fire!"
"No, he won fairly enough!"”

— Michelle Paver

I wanted to write a very simple story about a boy, a wolf, a girl, a bear and a forest, so I thought I might set it in the past. I didn't realise that it went back to when I was 10: I used to love the Stone Age when I was a kid and wanted to live in it, and I got rid of my bed and slept on the floor, but I didn't remember it.

— Michelle Paver

“When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he said no. I was a burnt-out litigation solicitor in my thirties, hating my life, and his cancer made me re-evaluate it all.”

— Michelle Paver

“To experience the northern forest in the raw, I went to northern Finland and Lapland, travelling on horseback, and sleeping on reindeer skins in the traditional open-fronted Finnish laavu. I ate elk heart, reindeer and lingonberries, and tried out spruce resin: the chewing gum of the Stone Age.”

— Michelle Paver

“I've climbed Stromboli when it's erupting, which is quite a heavy climb: three hours with a helmet to get to the top. When you're there, and it's dark, and you can see this eruption and feel it, it's quite different to watching it on TV.”

— Michelle Paver

“In a ghost story, usually you've got to hang on until daylight, and you'll be alright. But if daylight's four months away, then you have a problem.”

— Michelle Paver

A lot of my writing is wish-fulfilment, making things the way I want them to be.

— Michelle Paver

“All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.”

— Michelle Paver

“Even if you plan your book, the actual writing is unplanned.”

— Michelle Paver

“For a child, reading a book can be such an intense experience.”

— Michelle Paver

“I definitely don't write with any kind of 'message' or 'lesson,' probably because when I was a child, I used to run a mile from books like that.”

— Michelle Paver

“I'd been interested in animal behaviour as a teenager and had thought of studying it at one point.”

— Michelle Paver

“I've wanted to write a ghost story for years, and my main aim was to write the most frightening ghost story that I could think of.”

— Michelle Paver

“Indigenous people all over the world take quite a lot of trouble with their hair and their clothes.”

— Michelle Paver

“It's true to say that once I've got the bare bones of a story, I often get ideas from my own research trips to faraway places.”

— Michelle Paver

Mostly, research is much more fun than the actual writing.

— Michelle Paver

“People often ask writers where they get their inspiration, and for me, the short answer is that I haven't a clue; I'm just grateful that I get them.”

— Michelle Paver

“By about chapter six of 'Wolf Brother,' I was having so much fun that I knew I wanted it to go on and I couldn't tell Torak's story in one book. So I sat down, and it took me about a week to plan in broad outline all six books.”

— Michelle Paver

“Doing field trips rather than simply researching online allows me to experience the story from the point of view of my main character; you can't get that by sitting at a desk.”

— Michelle Paver

For a novelist, the great thing about the Stone Age people is that we know virtually nothing about their beliefs - which means that I get to make it up! But it's still got to be plausible.

— Michelle Paver

“For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.”

— Michelle Paver

“Have you ever held a snake? They are so strong. You can see why there are so many myths about them: they are unlike any other creature. It's extraordinary how that little brain can keep everything moving in different directions.”

— Michelle Paver

“I actually carry a little picture of a wolf in my wallet, rather like people carry a picture of their kids. The reason I do that is to remind myself why I'm doing this, to remind myself of the story.”

— Michelle Paver

“I didn't do it for the money. I know a lot of people say that, but if I'd wanted to be rich, I'd have stayed working as a city lawyer. I gave that up eight years ago and took a massive drop in salary, and I didn't mind because I was doing what I loved. There's plenty of material for the other five books.”

— Michelle Paver

“I didn't wake up one day and think, 'I'm not going to have children.' My mother was a housewife and brought up three children, so I just thought it would happen.”

— Michelle Paver

“I don't use the Internet, as I don't like living with lots of distractions. I have tried, but I found it a hindrance. as my sense of priorities goes out of the window and it pulls me out of my writing, particularly with email. I'd sit there for hours just replying to emails.”

— Michelle Paver

“I hate it when you see in films people with their anoraks flapping open in a blizzard. They'd be dead in a couple of minutes. It's got to be real. It's got to work.”

— Michelle Paver

“I live on my own, happily, and I've never wanted children, but it did occur to me one day that there's part of me in 'Torak' - he's a loner, I'm a loner - as there's part of me in 'Renn,' who's quite waspish. I think, in some senses, 'Torak' is the son I never had.”

— Michelle Paver

I rode 300 miles through the forest and ate all sorts of strange food. And every time 'Torak' did something new, like swimming with killer whales or kayaking, I thought I'd better go and do it.

— Michelle Paver

I talk to children in schools all over the world, and I've found that both boys and girls are fascinated by how hunter-gatherers manage to survive entirely on what's around them in their environment: trees, rocks, animals and plants.

— Michelle Paver

“I would love to live in the wilds of nowhere, and when writing 'Chronicles,' I would occasionally rent a cottage in the middle of nowhere that had no mobile reception, but I'm not about to move away from my family.”

— Michelle Paver

I'm not the next J. K. Rowling. We've got one already. It's flattering to be compared to her. I like her books and loved the first three particularly, but apart from the fact that they've got young boys as heroes, they're very different.

— Michelle Paver

“My mother had to stop me reading to make me go and get some fresh air. I used to get so annoyed. She actually had to sit on my book because, otherwise, I would find it.”

— Michelle Paver

“My thirties merged into my forties, and I sort of gradually realised that I don't really want children. Now I'm glad I don't have them. Part of that is because I have my books.”

— Michelle Paver

“The most remote place I've been to was in Greenland. I remember setting out for a solo hike from a small cabin, itself several hours' boat ride from the nearest settlement.”

— Michelle Paver

“There's this whole thing of being two people. You are the person you want to be - the writer - and then there's this weird other life of going on tour and talking about the writing. And that really is weird.”

— Michelle Paver

“To get the feel of the polar night, I went back to Spitsbergen in winter. I went snowshoeing in the dark and experimented with headlamps and climbed a glacier in driving snow.”

— Michelle Paver

Why do so many children love the idea of being snowed in or shipwrecked, of having to survive on one's own? When I was a child, I was no exception. I wanted to hunt with a bow and arrow like the Stone Age people: to skin deer and build my own shelter. And I desperately wanted a wolf. As we lived in London, my options were limited.

— Michelle Paver