To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home.

Character comes from following our highest sense of right, from trusting ideas without being sure they’ll work.

Sometimes when you say goodbye, that's the right thing to do in a relationship.

Dying is like diving into a deep lake on a hot day. There's the shock of that sharp, cold change, the pain of it for a second, and then accepting is a swim in reality. But after so many times, even the shock wears off.

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.

It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned - when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse.