Richard Bach Quotes

There are grand rewards for those who pick the high hard roads, but those rewards are hidden by years.

Everybody is given a Dream ... you may have to work for it however ...

There is such a thing as perfection ... and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth ... Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.

Every step in every proud life is a run from safety to the dark, and the only thing to trust is what we think is true.

We are focus-points of consciousness, [...] enormously creative. When we enter the self-constructed hologrammetric arena we call spacetime, we begin at once to generate creativity particles, imajons, in violent continuous pyrotechnic deluge. Imajons have no charge of their own but are strongly polarized through our attitudes and by the force of our choice and desire into clouds of conceptons, a family of very-high-energy particles which may be positive, negative or neutral. [...] Some common positive conceptions are exhilarons, excytons, rhapsodons, jovions. Common negative conceptions include gloomons, tormentons, tribulons, agonons, miserons.
"Indefinite numbers of conceptions are created in nonstop eruption, a thundering cascade of creativity pouring from every center of personal consciousness. They mushroom into conception clouds, which can be neutral or strongly charged - buoyant, weightless or leaden, depending on the nature of their dominant particles.
"Every nanosecond an indefinite number of conception clouds build to critical mass, then transform in quantum bursts to high-energy probability waves radiating at tachyon speeds through an eternal reservoir of supersaturated alternate events. Depending on their charge and nature, the probability waves crystallize certain of these potential events to match the mental polarity of their creating consciousness into holographic appearance. [...]
"The materialized events become that mind's experience, freighted

What matters is how I use what I know, every minute of every day; how I use it to remember, in the midst of the game.

Fear is all the fear of some loss: "I'm going to lose something." If we declare, and if we know in our hearts, "I already have everything that I need: I have life, I have creativity, I have joy, I have nourishment. I have everything I need," and if we just say, "It doesn't depend on my having a physical body to do it," then everything opens up.

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.

We know nothing until intuition agrees.

If we change in different directions, then we don't have any future anyway, do we? I think it's possible for two people to change together, to grow together and enrich instead of diminish each other. The sum of one and one, if they're the right ones, can be infinity! But so often one person drags the other down; one person wants to go up like a balloon and the other's a dead weight. I've always wondered what it would be like if both people, if a woman and a man both wanted to go up like balloons!

From time to time it's fun to close our eyes, and in that dark say to ourselves, 'I am the sorcerer, and when I open my eyes I shall see a world that I have created, and for which I and only I am completely responsible.' Slowly then, eyelids open like curtains lifting stage-center. And sure enough, there's our world, just the way we've built it.

His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and see.

He's changing. Every day more remote, protected, distant. He builds fests now for the soulmate he hasn't found, bricking wall and maze and mountain fortress, dares her to find him at the hidden center of them all Here's an A in self-protection from the one in the world he might love and who might someday love him.

Did you ever feel that you were missing someone you had never met?

Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another.

There were times in my life when I said, "Oh God, I'm making a terrible, terrible mistake here." And on another level it looked as if that's exactly what I had done. All of us can look back across our lives and see what we thought was a disaster was actually a blessing - from a long-term perspective, it was a blessing. With practice, we can shorten the length of time between "what a dumb mistake I've made" and "what a brilliant choice that was.

So this world, I think, and an indefinite number of other worlds of our creation, are also - we're here for fun; we're here for learning; we're here for remembering who we are, and who we are, are expressions of life so absolutely linked with the life that is, always was, always will be.

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.

Jonathan is that brilliant little fire that burns within us all, that lives only for those moments when we reach perfection.

"What is my highest sense of right?" we can ask at any decision point in our lives and not worry about if this is going to lose us a lot of money or is this going to make us a lot of money or whatever.

Know that ever about you stands the reality of love, and each moment you have the power to transform your world by what you have learned.

There was part of me listening that didn't think what I said was fiction. I was making up a true story.

The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.

In the path of our happiness shall we find the learning for which we have chosen this lifetime.

And behind it lies not blind chance but a principle that works to help us understand, a thousand "coincidences" and friends come to show us the way when the problem seems too hard to solve alone. Problems for overcoming. Freedom for proving. And, as long as we believe in our dream, nothing by chance.

He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all

There was a lot I didn't understand about messiahs.

In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea.

We magnetize into our lives whatever we hold in our thought.

We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture. We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it to gravel, we can shape it into glory. Examples from every other life are left for us to see, lifeworks finished and unfinished, guiding and warning. Near the end our sculpture is nearly finished, and we can smooth and polish what we started years before. We can make our progress then, but to do it we must see past the appearances of age.

There's so much to learn! And just when we think, "I've got it. I really understand what's going on," we're shown a whole new stage set on which to play.

There's this wonderful and very important event when we're born, and we forget everything that's gone before, or else we'd be such a mass of rememberings that we couldn't operate successfully on this planet.

Fear not, nor be dismayed at the appearance that is darkness, at the disguise that is evil, at the empty cloak that is death, for you have picked these for your challenges. They are stones on which you choose to whet the keen edge of your spirit.

Languages are fluffy big pillows stuffed between nations - what others say is muffled and nearly lost in them, and when we speak their grammar we get feathers in our mouth. It's worth it. What pleasure to phrase an idea, even in child's words, slowly, and sail it across the gulf in another language to a different-speaking human being!

One challenge of our adventure on earth is to rise above dead systems ... wars, nations, destructions ... to refuse to be a part of them, and express the highest selves we know how to be.

As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming instead of being. Beyond time, we are all one.

Like attracts like. Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to learn from who we are,and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well.

Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!

In every disaster, in every blessing, ask, "Why me?" There's a reason, of course, there's an answer.

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.

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet.

Civilization ... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

Sense of family is enormously important to me. In the larger sense, we're all of us family; we're all of us soulmates.

That's why love stories don't have endings! They don't have endings because love doesn't end.

How can a deer tell when a leaf falls silent in the forest? She hears it breathing differently.

How can we resent the life we've created for ourselves?

When we come to the last moment of this lifetime and we look back across it, the only thing that's going to matter is 'What is the quality of our love?'

An author is a writer who didn't give up.

All we see of someone at any moment is a snapshot of their life, there in riches or poverty, in joy or despair. Snapshots don't show the million decisions that led to that moment.

Happiness is a choice. It is not always an easy one.

Judge not by the form of the messenger, but the form of the message.

Our disasters have been some of the best things that ever happened to us. And what we swore were blessings have been some of the worst.

Whatever happens on the surface, it's leading us in a direction. That beautiful core within us that is our character will make choices that will inevitably leads us to a higher understanding of who we are and why we're here. And it's best to be aware of that while it's happening.

Tell him I said that he will know when he's my age that books aren't written on whims or old promises. Books are written on years turned inside out by ideas that never let go until you get them in print, and even then writing's a last resort, a desperate ransom you pay to get your life back.

We [people] have a teacher! The teacher is ourselves! We already know everything we need to know - our challenge is to discover that we know it. Turning to gurus, I think, we become guru-dependent, no different from drug-dependent, alcohol-dependent - needing an outside force to control our lives.

A Name Is A Label, And As Soon As There Is A Label, The Ideas Disappear And Out Comes Label-Worship And Label-Bashing, And Instead Of Living By A Theme Of Ideas, People Begin Dying For Labels ... And The Last Thing The World Needs Is Another Religion.

How many of us count fictional characters, or those we've never met, among our closest friends? My hand's up.

Part of us is always the observer, and no matter what, it observes. It watches us. It does not care if we are happy or unhappy, if we are sick or well, if we live or die. It's only job is to sit there on our shoulder and pass judgment on whether we are worthwhile human beings.

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.

Only a few people are interested in what you have to say, but that's all right. You don't tell the quality of a master by the size of his crowds, remember.

If I've learned one lesson in all my days, it's this: Life starts new, every sunrise.

The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go.

I've owned 41 airplanes. A few of them would talk with me. This little seaplane, though, we've had long conversations in flight. There's a spirit in anything, I think, into which we weave our soul. Not many pilots talk about it, but they think about it in the quiet dark of a night flight.

What a delighted fascination it is, to stand aside and watch our dearest friend perform on stage without us.

You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.

Before you'll change, something important must be at risk.

Just read The Virtue of Minding Your Own Business. Oh my, what currents run deep! Beautifully seen, beautifully told. Praise praise praise ... Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer!
Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, on Sandcastle and Other Stories

Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives.

Amazing. You were so attached to it, and it still disappeared for you."
"Attached! I was whocking that cloud with everything I had! Fireballs, laser beams, vacuum cleaner a block high ... "
"Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there is to it.

Mortalhood is a fine state to visit, but you'd better not call it home.

Isn't it strange how much we know
if only we ask ourselves
instead of somebody else.

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 ...

I'm fine. Indestructible.

We can start working with time, if you wish, 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

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.

We design our lives through the power of choices.

Everything above may be wrong!

Nobody comes to Earth to dodge problems. We come here to take 'em on.

If you don't want to be a teacher, you'd better get off this planet.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

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.

I had experiences along the way that helped me to realize that letting go was the way that worked for me to find something that I, personally, as a reader, love to read.

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.

Sometimes when learning comes before experience It doesn't make sense right away.

Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you're a master, and you are.

Pain and adversity are powerful vehicles to promote personal growth. Nothing helps you learn, grow, and evolve more quickly. Nothing offers you as big an opportunity to reclaim more of your authentic power as a person.

Shop for security over happiness and we buy it at that price.

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.

We love action and adventure, but we use it to go out and start wars and kill people.

I think the source of our sorrow and the source of our joy are intimately entwined. Our sorrow is that we have forgotten who we are, we have forgotten we are one with that source of all life - absolutely indestructible, perfect, joyful. The source of our joy is when we remember that.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.

Don't you think between here and now we will see each other once or twice?

True enjoy stories never ever have endings.

I take the paraglider to the mountain or I roll Daisy out of her hangar and I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I'm just soul on a sunbeam.

The man who flies an airplane ... must believe in the unseen.

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.

The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?

Wrong turns are as important as right turns. More important, sometimes.