“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...”

“Some people say they feel very small when they think about space. I felt more expansive, very connected to the universe.”

“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...”

“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,...”

“You can start with nothing and still succeed. However, if you don't start you will never succeed.”

“I think, in storytelling, people want to see triumph, and so it's usually nice to start with failure and see someone somehow rise above it. People like to see people try. And they like to see peopl...”

“The starkest rejection letter might be followed by a million-dollar advance. Don't let rejection start to look the same as failure.”

“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.”

“The foundation upon which any society is built is called values.”

“Trust is the foundation of any society”

“Taking time to look back, is a foundation on course to build a stable future.”