"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

"The opposite of Loneliness is not Togetherness , It's Intimacy."

"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly."

"Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us!"

"What matters most:'What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a downy spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.'Wind, Sand and Stars."

"My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home."

"It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost."

"Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose."

"The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages."

"Whatever harm I would do to another, I shall do first to myself.As I respect and am kind to myself, so shall I respect and be kind to peers, to elders, to kits.I claim for others the freedom to live as they wish, to think and believe as they will. I claim that freedom for myself.I shall make each choice and live each day to my highest sense of right."

"Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger."

"Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully."

"If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there is to it."

"Same with anyone who's been flying for years and loves it still... we're part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we're one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind!"

"I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me."

"I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service."

"Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives."

"Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah."

"Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed."

"Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness."

"We reviewed the ways we had to bring customers: Method A, flying aerobatics at the edge of town. Method B, the parachute jump. Then we began experimenting with Method C. There is a principle that says if you lay out a lonely solitaire game in the center of the wilderness, someone will soon come along to look over your shoulder and tell you how to play your cards. This was the principle of Method C. We unrolled our sleeping bags and stretched out under the wing, completely uncaring."

"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."

"The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, 'I've gotresponsibilities."

"Get this in mind early: We never grow up."

"I'm here not because I am supposed to be here, or because I'm trapped here, but because I'd rather be with you than anywhere else in the world."

"In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice."

"Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't."

"Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof."

"Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?"

"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit."

"We are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe."

"Having made the decision to love, had I chosen life instead of death?"

"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life."

"Like attracts like. It'll surprise you as long as you live. Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow something will happen, something you couldn't plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall."

"The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change."

"True love stories never have endings."

"Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you're a master, and you are."

"Listen to what you know instead of what you fear."

"Never stop being a kid, Richard. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead."

"If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were."

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly."