Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a story by Richard Bach

 

"Irresponsibility? My brothers!" he cried. "Who is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higher purpose for life? For a thousand years we have srabbled after fish heads, but now we have a reason to live  - to learn, to discover, to be free!"

"Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew way out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and see."

"Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock?

...we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome."

"No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect."

"Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

"'You can go to any place and to any time you wish to go,' the Elder said. 'I've gone everywhere and everwhen I can think of.' He looked across the sea. 'It's strange, the gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel, go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly. Remember, Jonathan, heaven isn't a place or a time, because place and time are so very meaningless. Heaven is..."

"...The trick was to know his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time."

"But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talking quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop their learning and their practicing and their striving to understand more of the perfect invisible principle of all life. Then, as he spoke, his feathers went brighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no gull could look upon him.

'Jonathan,' he said, and these were the last words that he spoke, 'keep working on love.'"

"'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 Neverending Story - Michael Ende

"When it comes to controlling human there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts."

"When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them."

"The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn't exist."

"To be wise was to be above joy and sorrow, fear and pity, ambition and humiliation. It was to hate nothing and to love nothing, and above all to be utterly indifferent to the love and hate of others. A truly wise man attached no importance to anything. Nothing could upset him and nothing could harm him. Yes, to be like that would be his final wish, the wish that would bring him to what he really wanted."

"...he jumped into the crystal-clear water. He splashed and spluttered and let the sparkling rain fall into his mouth. He drank till his thirst was quenched. And joy filled him from head to foot, the joy of living and the joy of being himself. He was newborn. And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be. If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else. Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.

    And much later, long after Bastian had returned to his world, in his maturity and even in his old age, this joy never left him entirely. Even in the hardest moments of his life he preserved a lightheartedness that made him smile and that comforted others."

"There are many doors to Fantastica, my boy. There are other such magic books. A lot of people read them without noticing. It all depends on who gets his hands on such books."

Translated from German by Ralph Manheim

Penguin Books 1984