Quotes & Sayings About First Time Flying

Whenever the weather licks the pilot instead of him lickin' the weather, he's finished. The first time makes the second time easier. And the first thing he knows, he's in trouble when the weather is perfect. — Frank Wead

My first thought was that a tornado had somehow picked me up and carried me off, like in the Wizard of Oz. No old witches pedaled by, and I didn't see any flying farm animals or chicken coops, and after a few agonizing minutes, I fell deep into unconsciousness again. — J.R. Rain

If you are a long-time reader, then you know the story thus far. You were there when the Alma Alerons first arrived at Hogwarts in their peculiar flying cars. You know how the new Hogwarts headmaster came to be, and what his story is. You know all about the Gremlins - including Ted Lupin's dark secret, and Petra Morganstern's tragic past. You witnessed the raising of the Wocket, the return of the Gatekeeper, and the Hogwarts all-school debate. In short, you are prepared (as much as you can be) for what is to come. — G. Norman Lippert

Fine, fine. Anybody else want to bother me while I'm flying an airship without an instructor for the first time? — Patrick Weekes

I couldn't keep the dimensions of my car in my head. Or my own, for I kept having accidents. I cracked cups. I dropped plates. Fell over. Broke a toe on a door-jamb. I was as clumsy as I had been as a child. But when I was busy with Mabel I was never clumsy. The world with the hawk in it was insulated from harm, and in that world I was exactly aware of all the edges of my skin. Every night I slept and dreamed of creances, of lines and knots, of skeins of wool, skeins of geese flying south. And every afternoon I walked out onto the pitch with relief, because when the hawk was on my first I knew who I was, and I was never angry with her, even if I wanted to sink to my knees and weep every time she tried to fly away. — Helen Macdonald

After seventeen days of flying school he could now call himself a pilot. After putting in twenty-five hours of flying time, he was commissioned a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army. W — Winston Groom

She thumped him again.
He looked startled, then caught her flying fist in his hand and gently pried her fingers open. Very carefully he pressed a kiss into the exact center of her palm. 'Savannah? Were you trying to hit me?'
'I didn't hit you
twice, you scum. You didn't even notice the first time.' She sounded very irritated with him.
For some reason it made him want to smile. 'I apologize, mon amour. Next time, I promise I will notice when you strike me.' The hard edge to his mouth softened into a semblance of a smile. 'I will even go so far as to pretend that it hurts, if you wish it. — Christine Feehan

At the end of her life she was aware of heat but not pain. She had time to consider his eyes, eyes of that blue which is the color of the sky at first light of the morning. She had time to think of him on the Drop, riding Rusher flat out with his black hair flying back from his temples and his neckerchief rippling; to see him laughing with an ease and freedom he would never find again in the long life which stretched out for him beyond hers, and it was his laughter she took with her as she went out, fleeing the light and heat in to the silkly, consoling dark, calling to him over and over as she went, calling bird and bear and hare and fish. — Stephen King

You seem to have a problem with me," he says in typical Griggs fashion.
I can tell he regrets saying it when he is treated to one of Hannah's long cold gazes.
"I think it will be a while before I forgive the trip to Sydney," she says flatly.
"Fair enough. I think it will be a while before I forgive you for what you put her through over the past six weeks."
I watch them both and for the first time it occurs to me that I'm no longer flying solo and that I have no intention of pretending that I am. I have an aunt and I have a Griggs and this is what it's like to have connections with people.
"Do you know what?" I ask both of them. "If you don't build a bridge and get over it, I'll never forgive either of you. — Melina Marchetta

Later, after flying in the Navy for four or five years, spending some time on an aircraft carrier, I applied to and was accepted in a program where I went to graduate school first and then to the Naval Test Pilots School. — Mark Kelly

To the Virgins, To Make much of Time
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he is to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while you may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry. — Robert Herrick

Going from a short to a feature is like going from crawling to flying. It's a big jump, really. Everything triples - size of crew, budget, shooting days, the cast. Not to mention the stakes - as a first time feature filmmaker so much rides on this film. — Aurora Guerrero

That's the point. This healthy-feeling time now just feels like a tease. Like I'm in this holding pattern, flying in smooth circles within sight of the airport, in super-comfortable first class. But I can't enjoy the in-flight movie or free chocolate chip cookies because I know that before the airport is able to make room for us, the plane is going to run out of fuel, and we're going to crash-land into a fiery, agonizing death. — Jessica Verdi

Millions of flying saucers landin' all the time and the government keeps hushing it up.' 'Why?' said Wensleydale. Adam hesitated. His reading hadn't provided a quick explanation for this; New Aquarian just took it as the foundation of belief, both of itself and its readers, that the government hushed everything up. 'Cos they're the government,' said Adam simply. 'That's what governments do. They've got this great big building in London full of books of all the things they've hushed up. When the Prime Minister gets into work in the morning, the first thing he does is go through the big list of everything that's happened in the night and put this big red stamp on them.' 'I bet he has a cup of tea first, and then reads the paper,' said Wensleydale, — Terry Pratchett

Oh my gosh," Somer whispers, one hand flying up to her mouth. "She's beautiful."
Krishnan fumbles with the papers and reads, "Asha. That's her name. Ten months old."
"What does it mean?" she asks.
"Asha? Hope." He looks up at her, smiling. "It means hope."
"Really?" She gives a little laugh, crying as well. "Well, she must be ours then."
She grasps his hand, intertwining their fingers, and kisses him.
"That's perfect, really perfect."
She rests her head on his shoulder as they stare at the photo together.
For the first time in a very long time, Somer feels a lightness in her chest. How can it be I'm already in love with this child, half a world away? The next morning, they send a telegram to the orphanage, stating they are coming to get their daughter. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda

AT FIRST THE PEOPLE in the Severn City Airport counted time as though they were only temporarily stranded. This was difficult to explain to young people in the following decades, but in all fairness, the entire history of being stranded in airports up to that point was also a history of eventually becoming unstranded, of boarding a plane and flying away. At first it seemed inevitable that the National Guard would roll in at any moment with blankets and boxes of food, that ground crews would return shortly thereafter and planes would start landing and taking off again. Day One, Day Two, Day Forty-eight, Day Ninety, any expectation of a return to normalcy long gone by now, then Year One, Year Two, Year Three. Time had been reset by catastrophe. — Emily St. John Mandel

I have so many miles and I've been flying for so long that every time I fly, it's first class. It's one of those things that, if I needed to jump on a plane, and fly to Spain tomorrow, I know I could get it done. Just like that. — Lupe Fiasco

Hated France when I first got over here. Got on the train at Le Havre, and looked out of the window and thought it looked so exactly like America, I wanted to cry. The scenery flying past, the hills and barns and cows, were just the sort of things you keep coming across through a train window in the States. The Untrained Eye, I told myself, training it enough to see that all the signs were written in French, at the same time letting the untrained nose get its first exotic whiff of garlic from my traveling companions, and the untrained stomach its first attack of French dysentery. But still, these were the only differences. I asked myself finally what exactly did I expect France to look like? No answer. — Elaine Dundy

For the first time in her life she could talk openly of the things which interested her and were important to her. She had a great need of speech, of putting her thoughts into words; otherwise her thoughts seemed to escape her, flying about her brain in a wild confusion. It needed the power of words to put them in their places. And Rachel was full of understanding, using her sensitiveness to fan the thoughts of Anna towards coherency. — Anna Kavan

For it was the one that I would have chosen above all others, convinced as I was, with a botanist's satisfaction, that it was not possible to find gathered together rarer specimens than these young flowers that at this moment before my eyes were breaking the line of the sea with their slender heads, like a bower of Pennsylvania roses adorned a Cliffside garden, between whose blooms is contained the whole tract of ocean crossed by some steamer, so slow in gliding along the blue, horizontal line that stretches from one stem to the next that an idle butterfly, dawdling in the cup of a flower which the ship's hull has long since passed, can wait, before flying off in time to arrive before it, until nothing by the tiniest chink of blue still separates the prow from the first petal of the flower towards which it is steering. — Marcel Proust

The first time Dad tried Rollerblades he had a bad wipeout on the sidewalk in front of our house- his feet went flying out from under him and he bruised his tailbone. "If God had ment us to have wheels on our feet he would have put them there," he said a few minutes later, searching the linen closet for the heating pad. And whenever Derek and I sometimes Mom went ice-skating at the rink in Ashton City, Dad would watch from the benches on the sidelines. "If God had meant for us to have blades on our feet ... — Evan Kuhlman

One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is usually dull. Remember when you first wanted to be a writer? Eight or ten years old, reading about thin-lipped heroes flying over mysterious viny jungles toward untold wonders? That's what you wanted to write about, about what you didn't know. So. What mysterious time and place don't we know?
[Remember This: Write What You Don't Know (New York Times Book Review, December 31, 1989)] — Ken Kesey

For the first time I was flying by jet propulsion. No engine vibrations. No torque and no lashing sound of the propeller. Accompanied by a whistling sound, my jet shot through the air. Later when asked what it felt like, I said, "It felt as though angels were pushing". — Adolf Galland

As a boy I slept in a meadow one night. It was summer and the sky was very clear. Before I fell asleep I saw Orion on the horizon, standing above the woods. Then I woke up in the middle of the night - and suddenly Orion was standing high above me. I have never forgotten that. I had learned that the earth is a planet and rotates; but I had learned it as one learns something from books and does not quite realize. But now, for the first time I felt that it really was like that. I felt that the earth was silently flying through the immensities of space. I felt it so strongly that I almost believed I had to hold onto something in order not to be hurled off. Probably it happened because, emerging from a deep sleep and bereft for a moment of memory and habit, I looked into the huge, displaced sky. Suddenly the earth was no longer firm - and since then it has never become wholly firm again - " He — Erich Maria Remarque

Glenn Hammond Curtiss was a bicycle enthusiast before he started building motorcycles. Although he only attended grammar school to the 8th grade, his interests motivated him to move on to greater things. In 1904, as a self-taught engineer, he began to manufacture engines for airships. During this time, Curtiss became known for having won a number of international air races and for making the first long-distance flight in the United States. On September 30, 1907, Curtiss was invited to join a non-profit pioneering research program named the "Aerial Experimental Association," founded under the leadership of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, to develop flying machines. The organization was established having a fixed time period, which ended in March of 1909. During this time, the members produced several different aircraft in a cooperative, rather than a competitive, spirit. — Hank Bracker

Enlightenment is like witnessing the brilliant sun for the first time in the morning. It is like seeing the beautiful flowers that grow in the wood, the frolicking deer, a bird flying proudly, or fish swimming. Life is not all that grim. In the morning you brush your teeth, you can see how shiny they are. Reality has its own gallantry, spark, and arrogance. You can study life while you are alive. You can study how you can achieve the brilliance of life. — Chogyam Trungpa

Flying in space is a privilege, whether it's the first time or the fourth time. — Scott Kelly

The pigeon had been unlucky. Ten birds had been on their way back to their Ilkley coop, flying in stolid, heavy formation; nine had returned home. The tenth, flying low over the moor at the base of this avian wedge, had plummeted soundlessly to the soil, its senses overwhelmed by the tendrils of consciousness which had enwrapped them.

When the pigeon awoke, moments later, all of the rudimentary universal constructs which defined pigeonness in its brain had been carefully swept away, save one. The entity didn't need birdseed; it didn't need a pigeon coup in Ilkley; but it needed to fly.

And it needed as much of the pigeon's cerebral activity as possible to focus on getting it to its desired location, which meant that for the first time in its life, this pigeon was reading roadsigns.

It was also experiencing emotions for which it was somewhat unprepared, most notably an insistent, imperative yearning for Leeds United. — Windsor Holden

I have a real soft spot for flying saucer songs and Frenkenstein songs. When I was a kid the first record I ever really liked was called "The Mummy", and the flip-side was called "The Beat Generation" which Richard Hell later re-wrote as "The Blank Generation". I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever heard. I didn't like Elvis much then, but I was very young. When I was a kid I used to play that monster all the time! — Tom Verlaine

Liebfraumilch?" Penny looked at the bottle in horror. "What the bloody hell are you doing buying Liebfraumilch?"
"Did I?" replied Layla, surprised. "Sorry, I wasn't concentrating."
Quickly downing the first glass of wine, she advised Layla to do the same. "The next one will be better," she promised. "By the time we're on our third, it'll taste as good as Chablis."
Penny gulped whilst Layla sipped.
Muttering almost to herself as much as Layla, she added, "Never mind, at least we've got plenty of chocolate."
"Oh, chocolate," said Layla, one hand flying up to her mouth. "I forgot."
Forgotten chocolate? Crikey, things were bad. — Shani Struthers

I always write on unlined typing paper and write the first draft in longhand, using cheap Bic pens. I try to write about four pages a day, which usually yields a first draft in six months. I don't plot ahead of time, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants for the first draft. — Tess Gerritsen