Ike Overmyer

“People ask me all the time how I survived. It wasn't that I was smarter or even stronger than anyone else. I didn't even know what I was doing. It was just that something inside me couldn't go along.”
― Eve Ensler, I Am an Emotional Creature

“They would give a lecture about how a pilot should never fly without a good solid breakfast—eggs, bacon, toast, and so forth—because if he tried to fly with his blood-sugar level too low, it could impair his alertness. Naturally, the next day every hot dog in the unit would get up and have a breakfast consisting of one cup of black coffee and take off and go up into a vertical climb until the weight of the ship exactly canceled out the upward thrust of the engine and his air speed was zero, and he would hang there for one thick adrenal instant—and then fall like a rock, until one of three things happened: he keeled over nose first and regained his aerodynamics and all was well, he went into a spin and fought his way out of it, or he went into a spin and had to eject or crunch it, which was always supremely possible.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

“Did he despair? Did he silently berate himself for allowing himself to be in that situation? Or did he finally realize what it is like to be me, to be a dog? Did he understand, as those interminable minutes ticked by, that being alone is not the same as being lonely? That being alone is a neutral state; it is like a blind fish at the bottom of the ocean: without eyes, and therefore without judgment. Is it possible? That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me. Is it true? Could Denny have possibly appreciated the subjective nature of loneliness, which is something that exists only in the mind, not in the world, and, like a virus, is unable to survive without a willing host?”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“Sometimes, it’s not our choices that turn us into who we are. Sometimes, it’s fate. Circumstance. Sometimes, we are pricked by so many thorns that we forget the fact that everyone else is traveling down the same thorn-ridden path.”
― Ammar Habib, The Orphans of Kashmir