There's a tremendously satisfying freedom associated with weightlessness. It's challenging in the absence of traction or leverage, and it requires thoughtful readjustment. I found the experience of weightlessness to be one of the most fun and enjoyable, challenging and rewarding, experiences of spaceflight. Returning to Earth brings with it a great sense of heaviness, and a need for careful movement. In some ways it's not too different from returning from a rocking ocean ship.

My petite little platinum blonde beauty of a wife suddenly turned into a public-relations dynamo. "The business is Buzz!" she proclaimed, and indeed so it became.

We're number one on the runway.

The universe is the way it is. It's not going to be changed by supplications.

I expected the unexpected and went [on the Moon] with an open mind. I think the visual scene was described by my words on first landing - "magnificent desolation." Magnificent for the achievement of being there, and desolate for the eons of lifelessness.

I'm sure that there are places in the deserts in Australia that could be similar to where we might want to go on Mars.

Timing has always been a key element in my life. I have been blessed to have been in the right place at the right time.