The Book of Flying Quotes

“Stories are life," protested Pico. "Without them, books would be only paper and ink, with them they breathe, the reader is drawn in, the stories become him.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“And he loves to read. He loves the whisper of the pages and the way his fingertips catch on rough paper, the pour of the words up from the leaves, through soft light, into his eyes, the mute voice in his ears.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“Memories must enter the bloodstream, must churn awhile through the heart's mill, must be crushed and polished, be nearly forgotten or cling like burs to other stories before they spill forth in purple patterns, shapes of small bones and worm rot, shapes of clouds and the spaces between leaves.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“The writing of poetry is a chancy business, it's currency solitude and loss, its tools coffee and too much wine, its hours midnight, dawn, and dusk, and unlike other trade the hours asleep are not time off.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“A forest is mystery but the desert is truth. Life pared to the bone.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“Conversations in the flesh are the first drafts toward the later conversations of the mind, where words and ideas are sorted and elaborated, recast.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“A city of squalls, foggy mornings, intervals of blue and white so immaculate the eyes ached. A city of readers, coffee drinkers, kissers on sidewalks, sad faces at wet windows. A city of umbrellas, woolen scarves, raincoats, cigarettes, wineglasses, cognac.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“We never look at the grass, though it is ubiquitous. If it's left alone to shake its hair loose it will produce tiny tassels and flowers, miniature and beautiful, that I'd never noticed before. Beauty is so often size and commotion for us, and fancy labels, that the subterfuge of loveliness all around us goes unseen.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“He skims over the sea weeping, the last winged man, salt water falling to salt water. And though he tries to flee his tears, the sea itself is all the tears of those who've ever wept. Even the sea, even the sundering sea will not set the sad poet apart, for the country of sorrows is the size of the heart.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“...his favorite books, those he'd read over and over so he knew just the lurch his heart would make when he turned the page and encountered the illustration of the despondent dragon under a half-moon or the fervor with which he flipped the final pages of another, the story so vivid he felt his relationship with that book was less an act of reading than a visit, a place he went to.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“Well, I guess I'll become a thief, then," said Pica unhappily. "though I don't think I'll be much good. I'm a pacifist, you see?”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“Who knows how long he might have stayed in that city, cozy, dousing his guilt with wine, cauterizing it with tobacco, had the city remained static. But keep characters in propinquity long enough and a story will always develop a plot.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“He went to sleep as soon as they'd gone, waking in the middle of the night and walking outside into a sky whose stars hung so low he felt he strolled among them and he could see indeed, so clear the air, the very flames of their inner workings.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“Beyond the stars you see are other stars, stars beyond stars,' she told him, 'and all are dreams, like shoals of fish in the oceans of the night.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“He thinks he will drown as the memories flood back, he cannot breathe, the lock is breached and his lungs are filled too bursting. But memories are seldom fatal.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying

“It may seem an easy task to disregard a secret but secrets are like splinters beneath the flesh, the infection spreads and spreads and then the limb turns gangrenous and must be sawn away, all for the sake of a sliver of wood.”
― Keith Miller, The Book of Flying