“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.”

“Whenever he closed his eyes, he still saw her flying, fighting with ferocious genius. He still remembered that kiss.”

“Not cry. Fly.“I can’t fly,” Bran said. “I can’t, I can’t…”How do you know? Have you ever tried?The voice was high and thin. Bran looked around to see where it was coming from. A crow was spiraling down with him, just out of touch, following him as he fell. “Help me,” he said.I’m trying, the crow replied…The crow took to the air and flapped around Bran’s hand.“You have wings,” Bran pointed out.Maybe you do too.Bran felt along his shoulders, groping for feathers.There are different kinds of wings, the crow said…Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he plunged toward the earth below. “What are you doing to me?” he asked the crow, tearful.Teaching you how to fly.“I can’t fly!”You’re flying right now.“I’m falling!”Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said. Look down.”

“... 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.”

“He looked at the world from above. Where I saw threatening waves, he saw tranquil water.”

“The White House usually followed the seagull theory of management: fly in, squawk and flap and shit, and fly away.”