For a moment, off balance, was I annoyed? Anger is always fear, I thought, and fear is always fear of loss. Would I lose myself if he made those choices? It took a second to settle down: I'd lose nothing. They'd be his wishes, not mine, and he's free to live as he wants. The loss would come if I dared force him, tried to live for him and me as well. There'd be disaster worse than life on a bar stool.

What matters is how I use what I know, every minute of every day; how I use it to remember, in the midst of the game.

Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.

The airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly. An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. Those things aren't destructable.

Nobody comes to Earth to dodge problems. We come here to take 'em on.

We're different, we're the same. You thought you'd never find a word to say to a woman who didn't fly airplanes. I couldn't imagine myself spending time with a man who didn't love music. Could it be it's not as important to be alike as it is to be curious? Because we're different, we can have the fun of exchanging worlds, giving our loves and excitements to each other. You can learn music, I can learn flying. And that's only the beginning. I think it would go on for us as long as we live.

We all know those who draw their boundaries carefully and say, "I'm only human. Nobody's perfect. I accept my limitations." And we know others who take an opposite view and say, "I can do anything I choose to do. It is in my power to change the world." And those are the ones who most often change the world.