Richard Bach
The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly.Collection: Perfection
You don't tell the quality of a master by the size of his crowds.Collection: Quality
Like everything else, Fletcher. Practice.Collection: Practice
The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves.Collection: Lying
For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.Collection: Flying
We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love.Collection: Fun
You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.Collection: Real
Flyers fell a certain kinship with the sight of the earth unencrusted by humanity, they want to see it that way in one sweeping view, in reassurance that nature still exists on her own, without a chain-link fence to hold her.Collection: Sight
Children are not our property, and they are not ours to control any more that we were our parents' property or theirs to control.Collection: Children
A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks.Collection: Soulmate
I was a microscopic life-form, infinitely large, stumbled backstage of its playhouse, caught a nanosecond glance of its own reality and nearly vaporized in shock.Collection: Reality
Here's how the people live here, in big house-shaped boxes to keep off 'rain' and 'snow,' holes cut in the sides so they can see out. They move around in smaller boxes, painted different colours, with wheels on the corners. They need this box-culture because each person thinks of herself and himself as locked in a box called a 'body,' arms and legs, fingers to move pencils and tools, languages because they've forgotten how to communicate, eyes because they've forgotten how to see. Odd little planet. Wish you were here. Home soon.Collection: Moving
An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding.Collection: Airplane
I've learned that it is what I do not know that I fear, and I strive, outwardly from pride, inwardly from the knowledge that the unknown is what will finally kill me, to know all there is to be known about my airplane. I will never die.Collection: Airplane
In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Love
I relax my body completely, relax my mind completely, and then imagine myself at a level where anything can happen.Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Writing
If our body is a perfect expression of our thought about body, and if our thought about body is that it’s condition has everything to do with inner image and nothing to do with time, then we don’t have to be impatient for being too young or frightened of being too old.Collection: Expression
We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.Collection: Ignorance
It must happen to us all…We pack up what we’ve learned so far and leave the familiar behind. No fun, that shearing separation, but somewhere within, we must dimly know that saying goodbye to safety brings the only security we’ll ever know.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Adventure
How easy it is to be compassionate when it's yourself you see in trouble.Collection: Trouble
Nothing good is a miracle, nothing lovely is a dream.Collection: Dream
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!Collection: Believe
If you don't want to be a teacher, you'd better get off this planet.Collection: Education
You are free to smile in the midst of massive tests and challenges, knowing that you have chosen to play this game, and that you have dominion over all the appearances of earth.Collection: Knowing
Your harshest truths are dreams, and your gentlest dreams are true.Collection: Dream
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 to gravel, we can shape it into glory. Examples from every other life are left for us to see, lifeworks finished and unfinished, guiding and warning. Near the end our sculpture is nearly finished, and we can smooth and polish what we started years before. We can make our progress then, but to do it we must see past the appearances of age.Collection: Block
Whatever enchants also guides and protects.Collection: Guides
If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?Collection: Friendship
Next to ‘God’, ‘love’ is the word most mangled in every language.Collection: Love Is
Listen,' he said. 'It's important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.Collection: Important
don't you think between here and now we will see each other once or twice?Collection: Thinking
A moment later Jonathan's body wavered in the air, shimmering, and began to go transparent. "Don't let them spread silly rumors about me, or make me a god. O.K., Fletch? I'm a seagull. I like to fly, maybe...Collection: Silly
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.Collection: What Matters
Of course I'm a fake. We're all fakes on this whole world, pretending to be something we're not. We are not just bodies walking around, not just atoms, molecules. We are unkillable, undestroyable ideas of the IS, no matter how much we believe otherwise.Collection: Believe
I don't think any of my books tell the reader anything new. But they do remind, in a time that is strident and screeching about the limitations of this world and all the trouble we can get ourselves into.Collection: Book
In the highest sense, we are all creatures of light. And I have a very difficult time talking with people who are cynical about the world. "The world is no damn good, and we're all animals," and that kind of thing. Well, I'm an animal.Collection: Animal
I had experiences along the way that helped me to realize that letting go was the way that worked for me to find something that I, personally, as a reader, love to read.Collection: Letting Go
"What is my highest sense of right?" we can ask at any decision point in our lives and not worry about if this is going to lose us a lot of money or is this going to make us a lot of money or whatever.Collection: Worry
I like that you can open up any one of my books anywhere and immediately be lost. I just love them so much.Collection: Book
There are two tests that we [writers] have for all of our writing: So What? and Who Cares? There is an answer to both. The answer to Who Cares is that a reader cares, if the writing is good. The answer to So What is that these ideas give us completely new understanding, change our sense of who we [people] are and why we're here [on this planet].Collection: Writing
Reason and intellect are opening wedges in an understanding of reality.Collection: Reality
Everything of this life as a mortal is fiction. It seems real, but...Collection: Real
The only enlightened masters I know are the people that I see every day and the people that I've seen through my life who have had the understanding, at some level, that we're here to express love.Collection: People
Fail at love, and the other tests don't matter.Collection: Love
He who argues for his limitations gets to keep themCollection: Arguing