Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions.

I take the paraglider to the mountain or I roll Daisy out of her hangar and I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I'm just soul on a sunbeam.

Without my airplane I am an ordinary man, and a useless one - a trainer without a horse, a sculptor without marble, a priest without a god. Without an airplane I am a lonely consumer of hamburgers.

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.We fear we will not find love,and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we don't have love we will be unhappy.

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.

For pilots sometimes see behind the curtain, behind the veil of gossamer velvet, and find the truth behind man, the force behind a universe.

The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly.