For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.

Do you ever have the feeling you're a tourist on earth?

This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

If we believe that we're separated from someone, though they stand in the same room with us, we're separated. If we believe that we're together, if we believe that they are with us, if we listen through our inner senses, there's a chance we'll hear.

Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life forms, and they call you crazy.

The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.

Never stop being a kid, Richard. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead.