Paul Celan Quotes

There's a moment on the arch of a jump, when you are neither rising nor falling. All you can see is the sky. All you can feel is the air and all you can hear is your heartbeat. That is all you are. Muscle and motion. It's called the deadpoint. I live for that.

I'm very comfortable in the air. And if you're really in love with flight, you're in love to a certain extent with being outside of the body, not grounded. The problem is, if you're not in your body, you can't actually feel anything particularly authentically.

The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air.

That anonymity that comes with talking in front of a crowd of people you've never met allows you to reveal anything, because you don't really have to associate with any one of them.

Most of the time, I'm a little bewildered or sort of feel out of place.

You can be in the league and still feel like you're not in the league. That was the point I was at when I left Toronto.

I haven't felt anchored my entire life. But I kind of like it.

Skydiving is special because it's almost the closest to an out-of-body experience you can have. We live in such a stimulated, connected, busy world - to be up in the air with nothing but yourself and the landscape is incredibly peaceful.

I don't really feel like I belong anywhere, which makes me belong everywhere.

I felt untethered in Los Angeles.

I'm not like, 'I act.' I'm like, 'I'm kinda floating. I kinda did this movie; it was kinda like going to camp, and I don't really know what any of this means!'

I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.

You just never set roots; you take pleasure in simple conversations, because you know you're not going to have much more than that. It's very isolating, and that can be a good thing.

We're just afraid, period. Our fear is free-floating. We're afraid this isn't the right relationship or we're afraid it is. We're afraid they won't like us or we're afraid they will. We're afraid of failure or we're afraid of success. We're afraid of dying young or we're afraid of growing old. We're more afraid of life than we are of death.

Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.

And seem to walk on wings, and tread in air.

It's an abnormal world I live in. I don't belong anywhere. It's like I'm floating down the middle. I'm never quite sure where I am.

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.

Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.

I'm convinced that FEAR is at the root, of all bad writing

On wings of wind came flying all abroad.

Sometimes our connection is frayed, it is in danger, it seems almost lost. Views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin. Wouldn't we rather have a destiny to submit to, than, something that claims us, anything, instead of such flimsy choices, arbitrary days?

Just look at the way he hangs in mid air!

I am quite alone. I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory.

Everyone knows what their roots are, but you've got to explore everywhere. You've got to explore the sky too.