I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.
Sometimes happiness is like the sound of a plane overhead. You look up to see it but the plane's not there. No matter where you look you can't find it on the sky, although the sound is still there and growing louder. You get a little frantic searching. At the same time you're thinking, this is stupid. But you keep looking and if you do finally see it, you feel absolved. Most of my life I'd been looking for happiness in the wrong parts of the sky.
Planes will never have the final, perfect model because their idea is all about the infinity.
During my training to become an airline captain, I had to learn how to navigate an airplane over long distances. Flights over huge oceans, crossing extensive deserts, and connecting continents need careful planning to ensure a safe arrival at the planned destination.
In 1996 - when, for the fifth year in a row, we had the best record among major airlines for on-time performance and for baggage handling and the fewest complaints for the number of customers carried - we dedicated an airplane to all of our 25,000 people. We put all their names on the outside of the overhead bins.
Jimmy Carter used to walk off the airplane carrying his own luggage. Do you remember that? I don't want my president carrying - I want the freaking Marines to be carrying his luggage, and they want to carry his luggage.
When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
The chances that your tombstone will read 'Killed by Asteroid' are about the same as they'd be for 'Killed in Airplane Crash.'
Oldtimers, weekends, and airplane landings are alike. If you can walk away from them, they're successful.
When I board an airplane these days, all the middle-aged men are dressed like me - when I was an 8-year-old. They're in shorts and T-shirts. And it's not just on airplanes. It's in business offices, teachers' lounges, and churches.
My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.
I was the only person I'd ever met who had a record contract. None of the E Street Band, as far as I know, had been on an airplane until Columbia sent us to Los Angeles.
Any time I'm in a moving thing, like an airplane, I'm usually asleep before we even get on our way.
I have the ordinary experience of being anonymous when I'm in an airplane talking to air-traffic control, and they don't know who they're talking to. I have a lot of common experiences.
On the first 'Indiana Jones' movie, I tore an ACL in one of my knees - can't remember which knee. The scene in which I was fighting the big German mechanic on an airplane called a flying wing, I was run over by the landing gear and injured my knee, but I can't remember which one it was. Lots of bumps and injuries along the way.
I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.
Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago.
I just want to be able to get on an airplane and enjoy myself in Disneyland, not sit there worrying about all these assassins.
Starting a company is like throwing yourself off the cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.
I've been around the world seven times, been stabbed three times, been down in an airplane, and once dated the Bearded Lady.
