Imbibe three or four times as much water as you think you need and skip at least one, if not two meals, when you are travelling. You should arrive at your destination feeling slightly hungry and your digestive system reset.

"What's the next thing that's going to kill me?" is a mantra for pilots and astronauts.

When I stand on the edge of a cliff or right at the edge of a building or something, it's one of the few things that gives me kind of a deep, overwhelming, irrational fear where it affects my physiology.

The emotional build-up and anticipation if you travel at Christmas can make it harder to enjoy a trip. I think sometimes it is better to travel outside of conventional holiday times for that reason.

Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how.

There is no problem so bad that you cannot make it worse

One Chief Astronaut used to make a point of phoning the front desk at the clinic where applicants are sent for medical testing, to find out which ones treated the staff well-and which ones stood out in a bad way. The nurses and clinic staff have seen a whole lot of astronauts over the years, and they know what the wrong stuff looks like. A person with a superiority complex might unwittingly, right there in the waiting room, quash his or her chances of ever going to space.