Eddie Rickenbacker Quotes

When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.

I'm very happy being me, although sometimes I'd love to be a bird so that I could fly.

I am a helicopter pilot. Something that gives me pleasure sometimes is taking my helicopter to go high, 2000 meter, 6000 feet, to go there and feel like a bird. In this moment I feel free.

Whenever I watched this movie ["How to Train Your Dragon"], I thought, "That's where I want to be. I want to be up in that sky. I want to be flying through the clouds and be living in that environment." So I think if I had a dragon, I would spend most of my time up in the air all over the place and taking in this beautiful planet.

There is a place where the sidewalk ends, And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind.

You know the best thing about aeroplanes? Apart from the peanuts in little silver bags, I mean. It's looking out of the windows at the clouds and thinking maybe I could go walking in there. Maybe it's a special place where everything's okay. Sometimes I do go walking in the clouds but it's just cold and wet and empty. But when you look out of a plane it's a special world... and I like it.

For me, reading was always the great escape without getting your fingers burnt.

One of my great joys in life is being a pilot. There is a great sense of freedom in soaring through the sky. You get a different perspective up there. Seeing things that aren't so apparent from the ground.

I always wanted to ride a dragon myself, so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.

Most children tell themselves stories in which they figure as powerful figures, enjoying the pleasures not only of the adult world as they conceive it but of a world of wonders unlike dull reality.

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

To be honest, Peter Pan was one of those fairy tales that I sort of related to, and I think that's the case with a lot of kids. The whole idea of escapism really resonates with a lot of kids.

One of the great things about books is you can afford to do anything.

I have always been drawn to young characters and seeing big tapestries through the eyes of a child. It probably comes from being a father myself and having a young son and seeing the world through his eyes. I write stories that are sort of the exaggerated version of that.

You can go up in the air and everything is gone. You know, you don't think about baseball. You don't think about anything. It's just something that takes you away from everyday life. I love being in a plane and looking down to see traffic on the freeway.

When you're around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don't have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day.

You've never lived till you've flown!

I believe that hunger for a 'lost dimension' of experience is a natural yearning in all of us, and it doesn't go away just because we ignore it. It is evidenced among other places in the millions of children and adults who obsessively read the 'Harry Potter' books. It is said that fiction is where someone gets to tell the truth.

The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring feely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of air.

I like to read, even though it was really tough, because I could go anywhere in the world in a book, and I could have so many adventures in a book.

Playing characters is fun because you get the chance to put yourself in someone else's shoes.

Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh, why can't I?

As I watch, the sky fills with clouds of snow feathers from every kind of bird there ever was and even some that only exist in the imagination, like the bluebirds that fly over the rainbow.

I'm a romanticist in many ways. I never get behind the wheel of my boat and dropping the anchor without saying to myself, secretly giving my orders to the crew "All right, lift the anchor, we're on our way to South Hampton. We're gonna beat them there with this load of tea!"

You seemed so far away," Miss Honey whispered, awestruck. "Oh, I was. I was flying past the stars on silver wings," Matilda said. "It was wonderful.