Overflight, 139

“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Hollow Men, also as quoted in the film Apocalypse Now

“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. (I am a human being, nothing human is foreign to me.)”
Publius Terentius Afer

“What man is a man who does not make the world a better place?”
Anonymous, piece of graffiti (presumably inspired by a movie where a slightly more intransigent Latin original, «Nemo vir est qui mundum non reddat meliorem», translates as, «No one who does not make the world better is a man»)

“One's measure is the distance from the top, the bottom, the others and self. But not one's own. Everyone's.”
author’s note

“The purpose in life is not to win. The purpose in life is to grow and to share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought into other people's lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them.”
Harold Kushner

“There’s people making babies to my music. That’s nice.”
Barry White

“Life is the victory.”
Pia Jarach, Track 21 Memorial

Overflight