“I stayed in the astronaut program until 1993. People ask me why I left. I thought I had a lot of things to contribute that would be difficult to do if I stayed. I thought I could have a stronger vo...”

“Sometimes people ask me how difficult the astronaut program was, but being in Sierra Leone, being responsible for the health of more than 200 people, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a y...”

“I always knew I'd go to space.”

“The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they are manifestations of the sam...”

“We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That's just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.”

“I think science fiction helps us think about possibilities, to speculate - it helps us look at our society from a different perspective. It lets us look at our mores, using science as the backdrop,...”

“The universe is seeming really huge right now. I need something to hold on to.”

“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”

“Sometimes I try to erase myself. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl. And I see. I hear. But not wit...”

“You should not think on a small scale”

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

“It doesn't sound that cool to say it, but I still get nervous for any show. But it's different degrees - playing a small basement of a club versus playing a festival like Firefly or Bonnaroo. The f...”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”