Anita Shreve Quotes

Every flight begins with a fall.

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

When the weight of the paper equals the weight of the airplane, only then you can go flying.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

The most amazing lesson in aerodynamics I ever had was the day I climbed a thermal in a glider at the same time as an eagle. I witnessed, close up, effortlessness and lightness combined with strength, precision and determination.

A bumblebee can't fly. He's aerodynamically unsound. But he doesn't know that.

And I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.

Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.

My mind is cautious but my heart is in a hurry.

Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly is there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?

I understand that in the industry, a lot of it isn't real. Which is a difficult thing. Where I come from a lot of people are straightforward and I've had to learn how to not say exactly what I feel. Sometimes it gets frustrating being a person who says what he feels and what his heart is telling him. Every once in a while I fall into letting the industry get the best of me and not just saying exactly what I feel.

What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down where you can find it.

You can study gravity forever without learning how to fly.

I hate the point where you have to get off the ladder, or get back on. I don't know if that's a fear of heights, or literally a fear of falling. I want to be afraid to fall. That seems like a good fear.

The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

Can anyone be so foolish as to believe that there are men whose feet are higher than their heads, or places where things may be hanging downwards, trees growing backwards, or rain falling upwards? Where is the marvel of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon if we are to allow of a hanging world at the Antipodes?

Start using your wings; they need some exercise.

He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.

Light streamed through one of the windows and across her face and I have never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in my life. If my heart had stopped at that moment I would have fallen happy and fallen full and I would have seen in life all that I had wanted to see and all that I needed to see. Fall. Let me fall.

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.

The skin of the coward changes color all the time, he can't get a grip on himself, he can't sit still, he squats and rocks, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his heart racing, pounding inside the fellow's ribs, his teeth chattering. He dreads some grisly death. But the skin of a brave soldier never blanches. He's all control. Tense but no great fear.

The purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern, like my dad... How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out... The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.

I promised to tell you how one falls in love.

If I was going to fall, I would hang on to my small comforts, at least, for as long as I possibly could.