I think there's an invisible principle of living too. If we believe we're guided through every step of our lives, we are. It's a lovely sight, watching it work.

You've given up your whole life to be the person you are now. Is it worth it?

Flying has always been to me this wonderful metaphor. In order to fly you have to trust what you can't see. Up on the mountain ridges where very few people have been I have thought back to what every flyer knows. That there is this special world in which we dwell that's not marked by boundaries, it's not a map. We're not hedged about with walls and desks. So often in an office the very worst thing that can happen is you could drop your pencil. Out there's a reminder that are a lot worse things, and a lot greater rewards.

Everything you've said, everything you want to believe is already true. You may not find some of it for a while, and some of it might take longer than that, but that doesn't stop it from being true this minute!

Flyers have a sense of adventures yet to come, instead of dimly recalling adventures of long ago as the only moments in which they truly lived.

Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love.

Anything we need to know, we can learn it from a book. Reading, careful study, a little practice, and we’re throwing knives expertly, overhauling engines, speaking Esperanto like natives.