We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture... We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it into gravel, we can shape it into glory.

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

The highest art form of all is a human being in control of himself and his airplane in flight, urging the spirit of a machine to match his own.

I'm not a celebrity or near celebrity. Sometimes people will say, "You're famous" and that stops me right there. What does fame mean? Fame is in the eye of the beholder. So, if somebody wants to call me 'famous', that's their business. I'm just me, a guy who messes around with airplanes and writes books that make sense to him.

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.

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.

Life does not listen to your logic; it goes on its own way, undisturbed. You have to listen to life.