Richard Bach Quotes

108 Sourced Quotes

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.

Richard Bach
Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect.
Then be sure of one thing:
The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.

Richard Bach
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…

Richard Bach
We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

Richard Bach
Listen,' he said. 'It's important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.

Richard Bach
There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

Richard Bach
You've given up your whole life to be the person you are now. Is it worth it?

Richard Bach
Grief is no more necessary when we understand death than fear is necessary when we understand flying.

Richard Bach
"There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from."…
"You're quoting Snoopy the dog, I believe?"
"I'll quote the truth wherever I find it thank you."

Richard Bach
They... found Jonathan gliding peacefully and alone through his beloved sky. The two gulls which appeared at his wings were pure as starlight... most lovely of all was the skill with which they flew, their wingtips moving a precise and constant inch from his own.

Richard Bach
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.

Richard Bach
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.

Richard Bach
I do not enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won't even reach for a pencil.

Richard Bach
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.

Richard Bach
I belong to a group of men who fly alone. There is only one seat in the cockpit of a fighter airplane. There is no space alotted for another pilot to tune the radios in the weather or make the calls to air traffic control centers or to help with the emergency procedures or to call off the airspeed down final approach. There is no one else to break the solitude of a long cross-country flight. There is no one else to make decisions.

Richard Bach
And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the dead engine and dead airframe come to life at the touch of a human hand, and join their life with the pilot's own.

Richard Bach
I do everything myself, from engine start to engine shutdown. In a war, I will face alone the missiles and the flak and the small-arms fire over the front lines. If I die, I will die alone.

Richard Bach
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.

Richard Bach