― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future. 

“Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's reason to live!
We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn to be free! we can learn to fly!”

“Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the alhatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!" "I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know.” 

“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.” 

“If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?” 

“You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.”

“We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull“You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way".” 

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

“Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.” 

“Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip," Jonathan would say, other times, "is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too.” 

“The gull sees farthest who flies highest” 

“Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect. -And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.” 

“Heaven is not a place, and it's not a time. Heaven is being perfect.” 

“He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.

"Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?"

"The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other.”

“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…”

“For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.”