Parachute Quotes

I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal treachery, and world war. It was always my intention, and my conceit, to use up, in the town's construction, every toy I possessed: my electronic train, of course, the Lincoln Logs, old kindergarten blocks - their deeply incised letters always a problem - the Erector set, every lead soldier that would stand (broken ones were sent to the hospital), my impressive array of cars, motorcycles, tanks, and trucks - some with trailers, some transporting gas, some tows, some dumps - and my squadrons of planes, my fleet of ships, my big and little guns, an undersized group of parachute people (looking as if one should always imagine them high in the sky, hanging from threads), my silversided submarines, along with assorted RR signs, poles bearing flags, prefab houses with faces pasted in their windows, small boxes of a dozen variously useful kinds, strips of blue cloth for streams and rivers, and glass jars for town water towers, or, in a pinch, jails. In time, the armies, the citizens, even the streets would divide: loyalties, friendships, certainties, would be undermined, the city would be shaken by strife; and marbles would rain down from for ~ William H. Gass

In the 1980s and 1990s, Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, laid off over 100,000 employees. His reward? When he retired from GE, he received a golden parachute of over $400 million dollars. This is the kind of corporate greed and irresponsibility that is destroying the middle class and must be ended. ~ Bernie Sanders

Who are you today? Are you a gulfstream, uplifting others... or are you a bad parachute? ~ Jose N Harris

Multiple Inheritance is like a parachute. You don't often need it, but when you do, you really need it. ~ Grady Booch

Come on, guys," I said, laughing. "What? Did you think he was going to ask me to the prom?" I teased. "Or, hey, Mom's burning macaroni and cheese for supper Sunday night; maybe he can come over and she can tell him about the time she jumped off a ninety-story balcony in Hong Kong with a parachute she made out of
pillowcases. ~ Ally Carter

He checked his parachute and launched himself into the Sea of Sarcasm.
Havana Red ~ Leonardo Padura

Suddenly, out of the mist came a parachute with a fresh Hershey chocolate bar from America. It took me a week to eat that candy bar. I hid it day and night. The chocolate was wonderful, but it wasn't the chocolate that was most important. What it meant was that someone in America cared. That parachute was something more important than candy. It represented hope. Hope that someday we would be free. Without hope the soul dies. ~ Michael O. Tunnell

May be you find out I could be useful getting people out of camps and prisons in Germany - just before they got shot. I should love to do it and I like to jump out of a plane even every day. ~ Christine Granville

I'm not a risk taker physically. I just have no interest in swinging myself off a mountaintop or parachute gliding or skiing down a totally vertical drop. These things don't interest me in the slightest, but I get so caught up in the color or the texture of the sounds of something. That's so funny to me. ~ Annie Lennox

Grab your parachute because this woman will fly you to the peaks of ecstasy and drive you crazy enough to make you jump off. ~ Athena Starwoman

It had been reported that Tanuki fell from the sky using his scrotum as a parachute. ~ Tom Robbins

Have you ever jumped out of a plane in a parachute, down to meet up with people who'd take selfies of your blood on their faces for breakfast? ~ Cameron Jace

Religion is like a parachute. It does not let us fly, but it helps to get us down in the ditch. ~ Debasish Mridha

Cause I don't wanna be a witness to this life,
I want to be charged and convicted,
ear lifted to her song like a bouquet of yes
because my heart is a parachute that has never opened in time
and I wanna fuck up that pattern,
leave a hole where the cold comes in and fill it every day with her sun,
'cause anyone who has ever sat in lotus for more than a few seconds
knows it takes a hell of a lot more muscle to stay than to go ~ Andrea Gibson

We would parachute in like typical asshole Americans and be completely clueless about what kind of trip we were actually on, asking questions like, "When do we start shooting the animals? Where is the freshest sushi? When do we meet Aretha Franklin, and where are the squash courts?" I'd also insist on hunting live lobster and killing it with my handgun. ~ Chelsea Handler

It's not called 'falling in love' for no reason. It's scary! It's like jumping out of a plane with no parachute. Or bungee-jumping without your cord attached. Or hang-gliding with only one wing. ~ Andrea Lochen

I love you, Bayler, and I know that's really scary for you to hear. I know you don't open your heart easily, and you're worried about getting hurt, but...Do you remember what you said to me after you pushed me out of the plane?"
"How could I forget?" I laughed blinking back tears. "I told you that you had nothing to worry about because you had a parachute."
"Let me be your parachute." His hands cupped my face as he stared down at me intensely. "Let me be your parachute, and I promise you'll never have to worry about getting hurt. Sure, we're going to fight and disagree, and there are going to be days where we hate each other, but I will always be there for you because I love you. ~ Steph Nuss

You may be very mad at some guy that walked away with a huge golden parachute, but that really isn't the important thing. I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing. ~ Howard Warren Buffett

In 1912, a man named Franz Reichelt jumped off the Eiffel Tower wearing a parachute suit he designed himself. He jumped to test his invention
he expected to fly
but instead he fell straight down, hitting the ground like a meteor and leaving a 5.9-inch-deep crater from the impact. Did he mean to kill himself? Doubtful. I think he was just cocky, and also stupid. ~ Jennifer Niven

Leap of faith. Shit, no parachute. - Katherine Yunker ~ Larry Smith

They call her love, love, love, love, love. She is love, and she is all I need. ~ Parachute Band

Prejudice, mostly,' Allie said, lying curled around Gibreel beneath parachute silk. 'They can't quantify the will, so they leave it out of their calculations. But it's will that gets you up Everest, will and anger, and it can bend any law of nature you care to mention, at least in the short term, gravity not excluded. If you don't push your luck, anyway. ~ Salman Rushdie

In an essay titled A View From the Front Line, Jencks described her experience with cancer as like being woken up midflight on a jumbo jet and then thrown out with a parachute into a foreign landscape without a map:
"There you are, the future patient, quietly progressing with other passengers toward a distant destination when, astonishingly (Why me?) a large hole opens in the floor next to you. People in white coats appear, help you into a parachute and - no time to think - out you go.
"You descend. You hit the ground ... But where is the enemy? What is the enemy? What is it up to? ... No road. No compass. No map. No training. Is there something you should know and don't?
"The white coats are far, far away, strapping others into their parachutes. Occasionally they wave but, even if you ask them, they don't know the answers. They are up there in the Jumbo, involved with parachutes, not map-making. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Grief is the parachute of love, that never really got the chance to embrace the view. ~ Nikki Rowe

Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich. ~ Chris Cleave

Christ. He was going to hell.
The thought should have helped with the erection. It didn't. He doubted anything would. Not even thoughts of the Colonel pushing him out of an aircraft from six thousand feet without a parachute was going to kill it. ~ Amy Andrews

I look at going to Hollywood as going behind enemy lines. You parachute in, set up the explosion, then fly out before it goes off. ~ Robert Redford

Walking out with the people, I didn't know which was more exciting, the air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt. ~ Charles Bukowski

War is a bazaar where lives are traded like any other commodity: chocolate or bullets or parachute silk. ~ Anthony Doerr

Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you're up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly. ~ Cory Lidle

Most of us buy pricey antibacterial soaps and use them religiously, but how many of us look at the ingredients in our air fresheners before we dust them around the house? There are people who won't drink water from a tap, but will speed on the highway, eat at McDonald's, bake in a tanning booth, or pay someone for the chance to parachute out of a moving plane--all activities that can carry greater risks. And how many smokers would complain about pollution if they lived next to a smokestack? ~ Anahad O'Connor

A snake doesn't need feet in grass.
A seed doesn't need eyes in soil.
A bird doesn't need a parachute in air.
A fish doesn't need a suit in water.
A bee doesn't need sugar in a hive.
A spider doesn't need thread in a bush.
A flower doesn't need perfume in a garden.
A bat doesn't need binoculars in a cave.
A giraffe doesn't need a ladder in the woods.
A cricket doesn't need a violin in nature.
A camel doesn't need wheels in a desert.
A wolf doesn't need a knife in a forest.
A lion doesn't need a spear in a jungle.

If you throw a bird off a cliff, you are helping it find its wings.
If you throw a fish into water, you are helping it find its fins.
If you throw a seed into soil, you are helping it find its roots.
If you throw a bat into the dark, you are helping it find its eyes.
If you throw a flower into dirt, you are helping it find its petals.
If you throw a cub into the jungle, you are helping it find its fight.
If you throw a camel into the desert, you are helping it find its stride.
If you throw a scorpion into nature, you are helping it find its sting.
If you throw a serpent into grass, you are helping it find its fangs.
If you throw a wolf into the jungle, you are helping it find its bite. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

In Italy the Coach is a paratrooper who jumps out of the plane but doesn't know if the parachute will open or not. ~ Claudio Ranieri

A matter, as the famous book intoned, of finding the shade of the parachute that best complemented you. But really: With no parachute at all you'd hit the pavement so hard it probably wouldn't even hurt, and you'd unleash a whole new color palate-bone, blood, muscle-in the process. ~ Elisa Albert

If a man has a tent made of linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up, and be it twelve bracchia across (over twenty-five feet) and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any height without sustaining injury. [His concept of the parachute.] ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Then he dreamed that he was in the open door of a plane several thousand feet above the earth and he had to jump holding a baby in his arms. It was his baby. He jumped, pulled the rip cord on the parachute, and it didn't open. The emergency release didn't work. He was falling fast. The wind tore at him fiercely. He was gripping the baby as tightly as he could but the wind pried under his arms, strained at his muscles, and suddenly the baby was loose, falling beside him, just out of reach. He flailed and groped in the air, trying to reach it. The baby was falling just a little bit faster than he was. It was below him, falling away from him as he fell after it. The earth screamed up at him. He knew that the baby was going to hit first and he would see it, would know it for a whole fraction of a second before he was smashed into a pulp himself. The terrible millisecond of that grief burst in him and he woke shrieking. He couldn't get the dream out of his head. He prayed that he would have the dream again but that this time he would fall faster and be allowed to die first. ~ Katherine Dunn

Instead of putting someone in prison for being a hooligan, give him a choice. He may have beaten someone up and he's got eight years, but tell him you can do eight years inside or spend five years in the Army. Put him in the Parachute Regiment, they'd soon sort him out. ~ David Bailey

Falling in love feels like jumping out of a plane without a parachute and somehow landing safely and then wanting to do it again the next day. ~ Victoria Denault

It was autumn, the springtime of death. Rain spattered the rotting leaves, and a wild wind wailed. Death was singing in the shower. Death was happy to be alive. The fetus bailed out without a parachute. It landed in the sideline Astroturf, so upsetting the cheerleaders that for the remained of the afternoon their rahs were more like squeaks. ~ Tom Robbins

While the lake lapped at their feet and the mountains absorbed their calls and the sky flung its blue parachute over their heads, he thought how wonderful it was that life was, after all, more simple than he had ever imagined. ~ Helen Simonson

The first time I heard him speak, I was sunk; his voice made my stomach do a skydive to my toes without a parachute. His voice reminded me of jazz and the bedroom and a strip tease: melodic, deep, soothing, slightly sandpapery, but with an irreverent, careless quality. I daydreamed about him reading me a book, the newspaper, a greeting card, an eviction notice - anything. ~ Penny Reid

A bird doesn't need a parachute when jumping off a cliff. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I mean, in the last few months alone, I've been pinned in a big set of white-water rapids, been bitten by an angry snake in a jungle, had a close escapewith a big mountain rockfall, narrowly avoided being eaten by a huge croc in the Australian swamps, and had to cut away from my main parachute and come down on my reserve, some five thousand feet above the Arctic plateau.
When did all this craziness become my world?
It's as if - almost accidentally - this madness had become my life. And don't get me wrong - I love it all.
The game, though, now, is to hang on to that life.
Every day is the most wonderful of blessings, and a gift that I never, ever take for granted.
Oh, and as for the scars, broken bones, aching limbs and sore back?
I consider them just gentle reminders that life is precious - and that maybe, just maybe, I am more fragile than I dare to admit. ~ Bear Grylls

Life is a free fall parachute jump. Pray all the way down and hope for a safe landing. ~ Robert G. Allen

I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

If I did not love what is present, if I could not cling to this enormous, safe parachute, I would long since have fallen into the abyss. ~ Christian Morgenstern

He didn't like violence, no matter what he'd told Jessica before. He was good at it, no denying that, but he did not like it. Yes, violence was the closest modern man came to his true primitive self, the closest he came to the intended state of nature, to the Lockean ideal, if you will. And yes, violence was the ultimate test of man, a test of both physical strength and animalistic cunning. But it was still sickening. Man had - in theory anyway - evolved for a reason. In the final analysis, violence was indeed a rush. But so was skydiving without a parachute. ~ Harlan Coben

What you look like on the outside is not what makes you cool at all. I mean, I had a mullet and wore parachute pants for a long, long time, and I'm doin' okay. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

I know the mind, like the parachute, is most valuable open. ~ Dan S. Kennedy

Sure you can manage that broom, Potter?" said a cold, drawling voice.
Draco Malfoy had arrived for a closer look, Crabbe and Goyle right behind him.
"Yeah, reckon so," said Harry casually.
"Got plenty of special features, hasn't it?" said Malfoy, eyes glittering maliciously. "Shame it doesn't come with a parachute - in case you get too near a Dementor."
Crabbe and Goyle sniggered.
"Pity you can't attach an extra arm to yours, Malfoy," said Harry. "Then it could catch the Snitch for you. ~ J.K. Rowling

At the Minsk tractor factory I was looking for a woman who had served in the army as a sniper. She had been a famous sniper. The newspapers from the front had written about her more than once. Her Moscow girlfriends gave me her home phone number, but it was old. And the last name I had noted down was her maiden name. I went to the factory where I knew she worked in the personnel department, and I heard from the men (the director of the factory and the head of the personnel department): "Aren't there enough men? What do you need these women's stories for? Women's fantasies…" The men were afraid that women would tell about some wrong sort of war. I visited a family…Both husband and wife had fought. They met at the front and got married there: "We celebrated our wedding in the trench. Before the battle. I made a white dress for myself out of a German parachute." He had been a machine gunner, she a radio operator. The man immediately sent his wife to the kitchen: "Prepare something for us." The kettle was already boiling, and the sandwiches were served, she sat down with us, but the husband immediately got her to her feet again: "Where are the strawberries? Where are our treats from the country?" After my repeated requests, he reluctantly relinquished his place, saying: "Tell it the way I taught you. Without tears and women's trifles: how you wanted to be beautiful, how you wept when they cut off your braid." Later she whispered to me: "He studied The History of the Great Patriot ~ Svetlana Alexievich

Impulsivity is something akin to spontaneously jumping out of an airplane and not realizing that you forgot something until about five seconds before impact. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

In order to fly you have to create space in the open air so that your wings can really spread out. It's like a parachute. They only work from a high altitude. To fly you have to begin taking risks. If you don't want to, maybe the best thing is just to give up, and keep walking forever. ~ Jorge Bucay

If I lose and have nothing when this is over, you can still drop me with my guitar by parachute anywhere in America; I'll walk to the nearest roadhouse, find a pickup band and light up your night. Just because I can. ~ Bruce Springsteen

The mind is like a parachute. In order to function, it first has to open. ~ Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar

Sometimes it is not wise to make a second plan; it diminishes the power of the first plan! In risky paths, make only one plan; this will increase the possibility of success! On the edge of a precipice, if your second plan is a parachute on your back, your possibility of falling will increase! When you have nothing to trust, you will be safer, because you have no right to make any mistake! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Back in August 1960 an American pilot called Joe Kittinger climbed into the open gondola beneath a balloon called Excelsior III and floated up to 102,800 feet. At this point, 20 miles above the Earth in what is technically space, he jumped. Moments later he became the first man to go through the sound barrier without the benefit of a plane. It was, and still is, the highest parachute jump ever, and it proved you can 'abandon ship' even when you're in space. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

At the possibility of truly being seen, something in his chest seemed to snap open like a parachute. ~ Michael Chabon

SEALs are warriors in every sense of the word: men who actually go into combat on missions that bring them eye to eye with their enemy, up close and personal. Even their methods of insertion are extremely dangerous; parachute jumps, submarine launches, and ocean swims in treacherous seas are very serious business. I guess that's why I find it hard to accept how our society tosses around the word "warrior" when describing an athlete, businessman, or even a politician. To me the term "warrior" is a sacred one characterizing a lifestyle of personal sacrifice. A warrior's training is continuous in order to maintain a constant state of readiness, often taking him away from the ones he loves and those he's sworn to protect. A warrior does this not for reward but for a chance to join his brothers on a high-risk mission. It doesn't sound like any civilian occupation I know of. ~ Mark L. Donald

I would climb on roofs and jump off using my parents' bed sheet, hoping it would open like a parachute. I was always getting hurt, breaking a leg, you know, bruising, cracking my head open. ~ Cathy Rigby

The sky in Seattle is so low, it felt like God had lowered a silk parachute over us. ~ Maria Semple

The Everlasting Staircase"
Jeffrey McDaniel

When the call came, saying twenty-four hours to live,
my first thought was: can't she postpone her exit

from this planet for a week? I've got places to do,
people to be. Then grief hit between the ribs,

said disappear or reappear more fully. so I boarded
a red eyeball and shot across America,

hoping the nurses had enough quarters to keep
the jukebox of Grandma's heart playing. She grew up

poor in Appalachia. And while world war II
functioned like Prozac for the Great Depression,

she believed poverty was a double feature,
that the comfort of her adult years was merely

an intermission, that hunger would hobble back,
hurl its prosthetic leg through her window,

so she clipped, clipped, clipped -- became the Jacques
Cousteau of the bargain bin, her wetsuit

stuffed with coupons. And now --pupils fixed, chin
dangling like the boots of a hanged man --

I press my ear to her lampshade-thin chest
and listen to that little soldier march toward whatever

plateau, or simply exhaust his arsenal of beats.
I hate when people ask if she even knew I was there.

The point is I knew, holding the one-sided
conversation of her hand. Once I believed the heart

was like a bar of soap -- the more you use it,
the smaller it gets; care too much and it'll ~ Jeffrey McDaniel

The jump did not go as planned. My father gashed his head and tore his parachute on the tail of the plane. He hit the water hard and submerged. When he surfaced, his head was bleeding, he was vomiting from swallowing seawater, and he had been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war. ~ George W. Bush

A brick could be used in place of a parachute, and a blanket could be used as a permanent wall of a house. In both cases, the skydiver and home dweller would ideally be a politician. ~ Jarod Kintz

When you've lost, it's better to brace for landing than to grasp at strands of air, hoping for a parachute that isn't coming. Not enough people know how to lose. ~ Ian Thomas Malone

Whenever you jump off a cliff at GOD's command, be sure that you will fly! Either by soaring on the palm of His hands or on the parachute of that command or you will suddenly have wings pop out and sustain you in the air. Either way, you will be flying and He'll be the one behind it all. ~ TemitOpe Ibrahim

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open. ~ Frank Zappa

The question: What color is my parachute?
The answer: blood red, brains gray, sludge black. ~ Jesse Petersen

Love is like skydiving without a parachute. ~ Lois Greiman

I'm passing the bar
Where you first got in my car
I'm not ashamed to admit
That it's you I won't forget

I saved your cigarettes and
Bad habits I regret
But the hours flew by like clouds
Whenever I had you around

Parachute lover
Take me away
From the plane that went crashing
And the earth that's in flames

Saving you is saving me
High above the redwood trees
But down below I see shadows
And parachute debris

We're drifting like children
Along for the ride
Each time we find love
Another parachute arrives

Our madness will burn
As bright as the sun
And I'll keep finding lovers
But you were the one ~ Crystal Woods

When that happens - when risk is taken and the filmmakers dive into the subject matter without a parachute - very often what you get it something with those qualities that make it age well with the public. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

I've decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn't only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one. ~ Brennan Manning

I always keep my mind open. For me, a mind has to work like like a parachute, works only if it's open. ~ Rickson Gracie

We reviewed the ways we had to bring customers: Method A, flying aerobatics at the edge of town. Method B, the parachute jump. Then we began experimenting with Method C. There is a principle that says if you lay out a lonely solitaire game in the center of the wilderness, someone will soon come along to look over your shoulder and tell you how to play your cards. This was the principle of Method C. We unrolled our sleeping bags and stretched out under the wing, completely uncaring. ~ Richard Bach

Your eyes are a blue universe, and I'm just falling into them. No parachute. I don't need one because I'm never going to hit the ground. ~ Tim Tharp

The tribal life wasn't something humans sat down and figured out. It was the gift of natural selection, a proven success - not perfection but hard to improve on. Hierarchalism, on the other hand, has proven to be not merely imperfect but ultimately catastrophic for the earth and for us. When the plane's going down and someone offers you a parachute, you don't demand to see the warranty. ~ Daniel Quinn

I said [to my mom], "I want to go to the parachute regiment." She said, "Whew, that's tough. But okay, I understand." ~ Scott Raab

Unfortunately, not every dead body goes to what might be considered "noble ends." There is a slim possibility that your donated head will be the head, the head that holds the key to the mysteries of the twenty-first century's great disease epidemics. But it is equally possible your body will end up being used to train a new crop of Beverly Hills plastic surgeons in the art of the facelift. Or dumped out of a plane to test parachute technology. Your body is donated to science in a very . . . general way. Where your parts go is not up to you. ~ Caitlin Doughty

The mind is like a parachute - it doesn't work if it's not open. ~ Frank Zappa

You cannot know if your parachute will work unless you jump out of the plane. ~ Mario Diana

She'd jumped out of plenty of planes. Albeit with a parachute in place, but she pushed that worry aside. ~ Robin Bielman

I hope you either take up parachute jumping or stay out of single motored airplanes at night. ~ Charles Lindbergh

Testing a parachute drop of a heavy object is not simple. ~ Henry Spencer

If I had my life to live over, I'd try and make more mistakes next time. I would relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously. I would be crazier. I would be less hygienic. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. You see, I am one of those people who live prophylactically and sanely and sensibly, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments and, if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead each day. I have been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a gargle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I had to do it over again, I would go places and do things and travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I wouldn't make such good grades except by accident. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds. I'd pick more daisies. ~ Sabrina Ward Harrison

The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open. ~ Robert Anthony

A well trained skydiving instructor can't save one from a broken parachute. ~ Bryan Way

We don't need a plan to do these things. We don't need to wait for just the right moment. We just need to show up, grab a parachute, and when it's time, jump out of our shoes after people the way Jesus jumped out of heaven to be with us. Sometimes, we make loving people a lot more complicated than Jesus did. ~ Bob Goff

But I've never really done anything that implies any kind of danger. I wouldn't skydive, I wouldn't deep sea dive, I wouldn't parachute. I think you're really just rolling the dice. Who packed your chute the night before? ~ Eugene Levy

When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow! ~ Yuri Gagarin

There was a lake beneath me, but the big, heavy parachute which had to be opened two miles above the ground couldn't be steered. My first thought was, 'Lord, they send just one woman into space, and she has to end up in the water.' ~ Valentina Tereshkova

We all make mistakes.
Mine was falling madly in love and forgetting to pack a parachute. ~ Michael Faudet

If I had my life to live over, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies. ~ Nadine Stair

With a groan, he let his head fall into his hands. His life was officially a bad eighties movie. Without the parachute pants. ~ Charlie Cochet

I've been caught in parachute pants. And on my high school yearbook, they used the wrong picture. They were supposed to use the picture of me with a nice suit on. They used me with my collar flipped up, in a fuchsia and white striped shirt. I blame Prince and Michael Jackson in the Eighties for that. ~ Ice Cube

Bigots are actually funny to me in the way that people who still wear parachute pants give me a chuckle. ~ John Ridley

I was soon discharged from the rehab center and sent back to the SAS. But the doctor's professional opinion was that I shouldn't military parachute again. It was too risky. One dodgy landing, at night, in full kit, and my patched-up spine could crumple.
He didn't even mention the long route marches carrying huge weights on our backs.
Every SF soldier knows that a weak back is not a good opener for life in an SAS squadron.
It is also a cliché just how many SAS soldiers' backs and knees are plated and pinned together, after years of marches and jumps. Deep down I knew the odds weren't looking great for me in the squadron, and that was a very hard pill to swallow.
But it was a decision that, sooner or later, I would have to face up to. The doctors could give me their strong recommendations, but ultimately I had to make the call.
A familiar story. Life is all about our decisions. And big decisions can often be hard to make.
So I thought I would buy myself some time before I made it.
In the meantime, at the squadron, I took on the role of teaching survival to other units. I also helped the intelligence guys while my old team were out on the ground training.
But it was agony for me. Not physically, but mentally: watching the guys go out, fired up, tight, together, doing the job and getting back excited and exhausted. That was what I should have been doing.
I hated sitting in an ops room making tea for intelligence officers.
I tried ~ Bear Grylls

I used to be an obsessive outliner - figuring that writing without an outline was like jumping off a cliff and building a parachute on the way down. ~ Robin Wasserman

Nik, are you still wearing that ****ing parachute?"
"Maybe..."
"You know you're going to be flying in space, right...? ~ Amie Kaufman

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken. ~ William Stafford

The white dress, made of billowy fabric like a cargo parachute, made her look like the female Boss Hogg trying out for a part in a community theater presentation of Brigadoon. ~ Jon Konrath