Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty.

Looking down at the Earth, you started to pick up a sense of speed much more than I had noticed on orbit.

We were only on orbit a little over two days so we had no adverse effects from being weightless...

You're going very fast when you're on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half.

We were on the dark side of the Earth when we started to see outside the window this soft pink glow, which is a lot of little angry ions out there going very fast. We were hitting them very fast.

I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67 and that program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us...

The nature of the shuttle was, we couldn't put a crew escape system in it.

Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.

The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to... spend some time looking out at this beautiful spaceship Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.

When you work really hard for something for a long time it's almost impossible to believe that it's coming true.

Selection of crews is always been somewhat of a mystery.

Hope makes a merry heart.

Obviously, when you're up against somebody you don't like there's extra motivation, but I don't think any person going for an Olympic gold is going to put friendship first.

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

The Samsara is the movement of life. And you, an individual self, a form, a moment on a wave, are bound.

Democrats, Republicans, independents, people across America. If you don't vote for me, I still want to be your president.

One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself entitled to put full confidence.

The biggest problem for me was feeling that as I became more balanced and a better man that I wouldn't have the fire to create from.

Slasher movies are fun. You watch yourself get chopped to pieces, yet you're still alive. You see the blood on the ax and think, Holy **it, this is sick, but you kind of get over your fear of death.

Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity.