A helicopter does not want to fly.
It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls,
working in opposition to each other;
and if there is any disturbance in the delicate balance,
the helicopter stops flying immediately and disastrously.
There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

This is why being a helicopter pilot
is so different from being an airplane pilot;
and why, in generality,
airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts
and helicopter pilots are brooders,
introspective anticipators of trouble.

They know if something bad has not happened,
it is about to."

Harry Reasoner
ABC Evening News
16 February 1971

“I wish I could tell you about these pilots. They make me sick with envy.
They ride their vehicles the way a man controls a fine, well-trained quarter horse.
They weave along stream beds, rise like swallows to clear trees, they turn and twist and dip like swifts in the evening.
I watch their hands and feet on the controls, the delicacy of the coordination reminds me of the sure and seeming slow hands of (Pablo) Casals on the cello.
They are truly musicians’ hands and they play their controls like music and they dance them like ballerinas and they make me jealous because I want so much to do it.
Remember your child night dream of perfect flight free and wonderful? It’s like that, and sadly I know I never can.
My hands are too old and forgetful to take orders from the command center, which speaks of updrafts and side winds, of drift and shift, or ground fire indicated by a tiny puff or flash, or a hit
and all these commands must be obeyed by the musicians hands instantly and automatically.
I must take my longing out in admiration and the joy of seeing it.
Sorry about that leak of ecstasy, Alicia, but I had to get it out or burst.”

John Steinbeck, "Steinbeck In Vietnam: Dispatches From the War" 1967