Airplanes Quotes

“That's the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see them again.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

“But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.”
― Hayao Miyazaki, The Wind Rises

“Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff?”
― Steven Wright

“[Short Talk on the Sensation of Airplane Takeoff] Well you know I wonder, it could be love running toward my life with its arms up yelling let’s buy it what a bargain!”
― Anne Carson, Short Talks

“And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the dead engine and dead airframe come to life at the touch of a human hand, and join their life with the pilot's own.”
― Richard Bach, A Gift of Wings

“The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles. When the steep glide began, people rose, fell, collided, swam in their seats. Then the serious screaming and moaning began. Almost immediately a voice from the flight deck was heard on the intercom: "We're falling out of the sky! We're going down! We're a silver gleaming death machine!" This outburst struck the passengers as an all but total breakdown of authority, competence and command presence and it brought on a round of fresh and desperate wailing.”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

“At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station
And not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation.”
― Ogden Nash, Hard Lines

“A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.”
― Russell Baker

“They hit me raw, hard, real,
the words you say (and don't)
as I leave to catch my flight.

But in real life airports,
no one is chasing anyone
to ask for a longer story.

And on real life airplanes,
it is too loud for anyone
to hear anyone else cry.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“Where can one buy a lit of that *Right Stuff* bravado required to shrug off the fact that your airplane is now a convertible?”
― Josh Gates, Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter

“Old Tom giggled, "Fooled ya, huh, Ma? We aimed to fool ya, and we done it. Jus' stood there like a hammered sheep. Wisht Grampa'd been here to see. Looked like somebody'd beat ya between the eyes with a sledge. Grampa would a whacked 'imself so hard he'd a throwed his hip out–like he done when he seen Al take a shot at that grea' big airship the army got. Tommy, it come over one day, half a mile big, an' Al gets the thirty-thirty and blazes away at her. Grampa yells, 'Don't shoot no fledglin's, Al; wait till a growed-up one goes over,' an' then he whacked 'imself an' throwed his hip out.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Wenn bei Flugzeugen die Motoren ausfallen, ist das nicht das Ende des Flugs. Die Flugzeuge fallen nicht wie Steine vom Himmel. Sie gleiten weiter, die riesengroßen, mehrstrahligen Passagierflugzeuge eine halbe bis Dreiviertelstunde lang, um dann beim Versuch des Landens zu zerschellen. Die Passagiere merken nichts. Fliegen fühlt sich bei ausgefallenen Motoren nicht anders an als bei arbeitenden. Es ist leiser, aber nur ein bißchen leiser: Lauter als die Motoren ist der Wind, der sich an Rumpf und Flügeln bricht. Irgendwann sind beim Blick durchs Fenster die Erde oder das Meer bedrohlich nah. Oder der Film läuft, und die Stewardessen und Stewards haben die Jalousien geschlossen. Vielleicht empfinden die Passagiere den ein bißchen leiseren Flug sogar als besonders angenehm.
Der Sommer war der Gleitflug unserer Liebe.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Too bad the Nazis aren't vampires, Ollie thought. At least with vampires, they could be deterred with holy water, crosses, and cloves of garlic. But with Nazis, we need antiaircraft guns, Hurricanes, and Spitfires. Ollie glanced back at the lofts. And maybe pigeons.”
― Alan Hlad, The Long Flight Home

“I'll always remember a certain radio exchange that occurred one day as Walt and I were screaming across southern California 13 miles high. We were monitoring various radio transmissions from other aircraft as we entered Los Angeles Center's airspace. Though they didn't really control us, they did monitor our movement across their scope. I heard a Cessna ask for a readout of its groundspeed. "90 knots," Center replied. Moments later a Twin Beech required the same. "120 knots," Center answered. We weren't the only one proud of our speed that day as almost instantly an F-18 smugly transmitted, "Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests groundspeed readout." There was a slight pause. "525 knots on the ground, Dusty." Another silent pause. As I was thinking to myself how ripe a situation this was, I heard the familiar click of a radio transmission coming from my back-seater. It was at that precise moment I realized Walt and I had become a real crew, for we were both thinking in unison. "Center, Aspen 20, you got a ground speed readout for us?" There was a longer than normal pause. "Aspen, I show one thousand seven hundred and forty-two knots." No further inquiries were heard on that frequency.”
― Brian Shul, Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet

“The biggest environmental change I noticed during COVID-19 was the absence of airplanes in the sky.”
― Steven Magee

“As she began to doze, she wondered if when you rode in airplanes, love, even old impossible love, sent hearts tumbling end over end.”
― Laird Hunt, Zorrie

“The new transportation system is multi-modal, autonomous and electric. People utilize a variety of vehicles including cars, bicycles, passenger drones, hoverboards, airplanes, boats, rockets and more. And with ease, efficiency and comfort. At Mayflower-Plymouth, we’re making that real.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

“It is my expectation that wireless WiFi streaming of movies on airplanes will increase the rates of illness and disease in pilots, cabin crew and frequent fliers.”
― Steven Magee

“Stephen Paddock had a pilot's license and flew small airplanes in the past. The altitudes that he flew at and whether he used oxygen above 10,000 feet in un-pressurized planes to prevent Cerebral Hypoxia from occurring is unknown. The highest altitude that he has been exposed to in an un-pressurized environment is a mystery. In 2017 he committed the worst mass shooting in modern USA history, killing many and wounding hundreds.”
― Steven Magee

“Aircraft, snowmobiles, and ATVs disturb a range of animals from harlequin ducks to mountain goats. Stress enzyme levels in both elk and wolves rose in direct proportion to the amount of snowmobile noise; enzyme levels returned to normal when snowmobiles were absent.”
― Julia Corbett, Out of the Woods: Seeing Nature in the Everyday

“Airplanes and satellites are a form of incorrect human environmental conditions.”
― Steven Magee

“In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell. These rushing people are watched by people who sit in plastic seats bolted to the floor and who might just as well be bolted to the seats. So far, then, the airport and the airplane are equal, in the way that the bottom of one septic tank is equal, all in all, to the bottom of the next septic tank.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“As a newly acclaimed author in the literary world, Night Flight, or Vol de nuit, was the first of Saint-Exupéry’s literary works and won him the prix Femina, a French literary prize created in 1904. The novel was based on his experiences as an early mail pilot and the director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline in South America. Antoine is also known for his narrative The Little Prince and his aviation writings, including the lyrical 1939 Wind, Sand and Stars, which is Saint-Exupéry’s 1939 memoir of his experiences as a postal pilot. It tells how on the week following Christmas in 1935, just a year after I was born, he and his mechanic amazingly survived a crash in the Sahara desert. The two men suffered dehydration in the extreme desert heat before a local Bedouin, riding his camel, discovered them “just in the nick of time” to save their lives. His biographies were quite hot for the time and divulged numerous affairs, most notably with the Frenchwoman Hélène de Vogüé, known as “Nelly,” who was referred to as “Madame de B.”
Photo Caption: Monument of Saint-Exupéry’s airplane in the Sahara desert.
Read these award winning books!”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater Two"

“If Tesla autopilot cars were airplanes, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would have grounded them.”
― Steven Magee

“As I stood there in the first hour of the night, what I felt most was the connection between the deaths of Andrew and my grandparents, between my life and Andrew's crash. The sky and the events in my life were not a web of inevitable synchronicities. It was easier for me to believe in these fluke alignments than to decide on the trajectory of my life. As I tried to force logic together, the center pushed itself apart.”
― Tom Griggs, Paul Kwiatkowski

“As I stood there in the first hour of the night, what I felt most was the connection between the deaths of Andrew and my grandparents, between my life and Andrew's crash. The sky and the events in my life were not a web of inevitable synchronicities. It was easier for me to believe in these fluke alignments than to decide on the trajectory of my life. As I tried to force logic together, the center pushed itself apart.”
― Tom Griggs

“At 30,000 feet up
The mind has plenty of space to wander:”
― Eugene Redmond

“At last they came to a hill and abandoned their bikes at the bottom. As they crested the knoll, Helen felt as though they were creeping upon some great secret and on the other side they’d find a giant sleeping or a black X with three shovels beside it. What they found was magic by a different name. Planes buzzed on runways like bees in a jar, and when one took off, a roar filled the air. As it lifted away from the earth, a breeze swept over their hilltop, and it left Helen wondering if they had been touched by the magic or if it was truly only a breeze.”
― Corinne Beenfield, The Ocean's Daughter :

“In the era of untested wireless technology, it is a good time to avoid flying in small airplanes.”
― Steven Magee

“Acclimatization to high altitudes used to occur naturally until the adoption of the car and airplanes.”
― Steven Magee