Richard Bach
Richard David Bach is an American novelist, aviation writer, and philosopher born on June 23, 1936, in Oak Park, whose writing spans both the practical world of flight and broader philosophical terrain.
Bach was educated at California State University, Long Beach, and his relationship with aviation extended well beyond the page. He served as a military aviator and air force officer, and worked at various points as an aircraft mechanic, flight instructor, and air traffic controller — a range of roles that placed him inside the subject he would write about throughout his career.
His novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull, published in 1970, brought him considerable public attention, and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah followed in 1977. Both books ranked among the biggest sellers of the 1970s, finding audiences well beyond those already drawn to aviation. In addition to these two works, Bach produced numerous other flight-related titles across fiction and nonfiction, maintaining a sustained engagement with aviation as both subject and setting.
The defining characteristics of Bach's output are the roles he occupied simultaneously: novelist, opinion journalist, philosopher, and working pilot. His writing draws on aviation in both fictional and nonfiction forms, and his flight-related work — from Jonathan Livingston Seagull through the many titles that followed — reflects the breadth of his hands-on experience as a pilot, mechanic, and instructor.
Quotes by Richard Bach
Richard Bach's insights on:
If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours if they don't they never were.
Can miles truly separate you from friends?If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?
If our friendship depends on things like space and time, we have destroyed our own brotherhood.
Can miles truly separate you from friends? If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished – If you're alive it isn't.
The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy.
You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or different past.
A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person, we're safe in our own paradise.
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed. It feels an impulsion, this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
A farewell is necessary before we can meet again, and meeting again after moments or a lifetime is certain for those who are friends.