“... she just had time to reflect that of all the many ways in which she had anticipated her final moments, crashing airborne into a pack of flying wolves seemed least likely...Meanwhile the pack of flying wolves had noticed something unusual.'What's that boss?' Said one of them, who was near the front. But their leader, Skoll, was too intent on opening his jaws wide enough to swallow the sun to hear.'Looks like a flying pink poodle,' the wolf went on, and this time Skoll did hear.'A flying pink poodle?' He said, with vast contempt. 'Give me a break Garm."'No boss, look,' Garm protested. 'It is a flying pink poodle...''I told you what would happen if you didn't take your altitude tablets.'But by now the other wolves were joining in... Skoll heaved a sigh of absolute exasperation. 'First of all,' he said, 'poodles can't fly. And they ain't pink. I-oh.' For now that he had turned he could see Flo, careening erratically towards them upside down with her eyes firmly shut... He had become, over the millennia, almost jaded to novelty. But now he was genuinely astonished. 'Wow," he said.”

“Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he'd go flying down toward it, yelling, "I found it! I found it!" The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn't know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was.”

“She remembered a story she had once heard: a woman had gossiped about her neighbors and later regretted what she said. She went to the rabbi and asked how she might take back her words. He instructed her to take a feather pillow to the top of the highest hill and tear it open, letting the feathers fly every which way. Then, the rabbi said, she should return to him and he would tell her what to do. She did as he said and when she returned, he told her to go outside and gather the feathers. But that's impossible, she cried. They're already scattered all over the village. He looked at her and smiled. The same is true of your words, he said.”

“I had a dream about a motorcycle," said Harry, remembering suddenly. "It was flying."Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beet with a mustache: "MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY!"Dudley and Piers sniggered."I know they don't," said Harry. "It was only a dream.”

“He's a gentle soul,' he told her. 'I can't see him put down, he wouldn't hurt a fly.' Indeed Boris wouldn't hurt a fly because in general flies were too fast for him.”

“Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't,but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. That's some catch, that catch-22.”