By: Richard Bach

Intro:

You can read Illusions in an hour or two, encountering a pilot’s lifetime of wisdom. The main character—a pilot and disillusioned writer—meets Donald Shimoda, a messiah who tired of his work as savior. Both living the life of poor, barnstorming pilots in the mid-west, Shimoda takes the main character under his wing, teaching him the ways of a messiah. Such a plot lets Richard Bach freely pass us simple truths and ageless wisdom to us. It is profound.

My 10 Favorite Index Cards:

“Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah. ”

“Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.”

“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.”

“If you learn what this world is, how it works, you automatically start getting miracles, what will be called miracles. But of course nothing is miraculous. Learn what the magician knows and it’s not magic anymore.”

“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.”

“We are the game playing, fun having creatures, we are the otters of the universe.”

“If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.”

“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.”

“Spoken like a true messiah! Simple, direct, quotable, and it doesn’t answer the question unless somebody takes the time to carefully think about it.”