Character comes from following our highest sense of right, from trusting ideas without being sure they’ll work.

Humanity is not a gift of nature, it is a spiritual achievement to be earned.

The creative, loving-something life is also the healthy one. There is healing and protection in doing what makes you happy.

I don't think any of my books tell the reader anything new. But they do remind, in a time that is strident and screeching about the limitations of this world and all the trouble we can get ourselves into.

My way of writing a book is completely disorganized - to hurl myself at the problem, over and over.

Thousands of volumes have been written about aviation, but we do not automatically have thousands of true and special friends in their authors. That rare writer who comes alive on a page does it by giving of himself, by writing of meanings, and not just of fact or of things that have happened to him. The writers of flight who have done this are usually found together in a special section on private bookshelves.

We love action and adventure, but we use it to go out and start wars and kill people.