Badass Pilot Quotes

I don’t mention him puking, because despite being a badass unafraid to call him a baby—which we both know he’s not—I don’t rub people’s shortcomings in their face. Life’s too short to be a shithead—the cruel kind, not the take-care-of-yourself kind—and you never know who you’re going to need tomorrow.

I was captivated by the description of the Navy test pilots, young hotshots catapulting off aircraft carriers, testing unstable airplanes, drinking hard, and generally moving through the world like exceptional badasses. The idea here (in the all-enclosing fraternity) seemed to be that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment—and then to go up again the next day, and the next day, and every next day, even if the series should prove infinite—and, ultimately, in its best expression, do so in a cause that means something to thousands, to a people, a nation, to humanity, to God.