Few more lines from 'The Bridge Across Forever' by Richard Bach.
"That's what learning is, after all: not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning."
"Do you ever notice, after you've known someone for a while, how their appearance changes?"
'He can be the handsomest man in the world,' she said, 'but he turns plain as popcorn when he has nothing to say. And the plainest man says what matters to him and why he cares and in two minutes he's so beautiful you want to hug him!'
"Never before had she played for me, claiming that she was out of practice, too self-conscious even to uncover the keys of the instrument while I was in the room. Something had happened between us, though..... because we were lovers, now, was she free to play, or was she the teacher so desperate to help her deaf one that nothing could keep her from music?"
"Isnt it strange, the way certainty always comes before shatterings?"
"So much is habit. Once we learn an airplane, our hands and eyes know how to make it run long after our minds have forgotten. Had someone stood at the cockpit and asked how to start the engine, I couldnt have said... only after my hands finished the starting sequence could I have explained what they had done."
"Such an experiment that would be! To say hello to all the other Richards flown out ahead of me in time, to find a way to listen to what they'd say! And the alternate me's in alternate futures, the ones who made different decisions along the way, who turned left at corners I turned right, what would they have to tell me? Is their life better or not? How would they change it, knowing what they know now."
"We wonder sometimes if ever we can know our closest friend, what she thinks and feels in her heart. And then we find she's written her heart to a secret paper, clear as a mountain spring."
"So much of hearing, I thought, is listening to what we expect and tuning out the rest."
"The highest form of regard between human beings is friendship, and when love enters, friendship dies."
"Why is it that so many airplane pilots also sail boats? Airplanes have freedom in space, sailboats have freedom in time. It's not the hardware, we want, it's the unshackledness that the hardware represents."
"The depth of intimacy we feel towards another is inversely proportional to the number of others in our lives?"
"Boredom between two people doesn't come from being together, physically. It comes from being apart, mentall and spiritually"
'I don't have a need to argue,' I said. 'I dont have a need to fight.'
'How do you know?' she said softly. 'How do you know thats not the only way some lessons can get through to you? If you didnt need to fight in order to learn, you wouldnt create so many problems! There are many times I dont understand you till you're angry.... arent there time you dont know what I mean until I scream? Is there a rule that we cant learn except in sweet words and kisses?'
"Makes you realize, after days like this trying to deal with those slugs in the IRS, how good it is to sit in the desert and deal with a real honest straightforward rattlesnake!"
'We met as early as we could have met,' I said. 'Earlier than that, you know it- I would have destroyed you or run away from you or you wouldnt have had the patience, you would have walked on me, with good reason. It would never have worked; I had to learn my way through that mess. I'd never do it again, but I'm not that person anymore.'
"I was wrong. Finding her wasnt the object of my life, it was an imperative incident. Finding her allowed my life to begin."
'Did you ever feel', she said, 'that you were missing someone you had never met?'
