I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I'm luckier than other mortals, and they sure don't come from visualizing victory. They're the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it. Like most astronauts, I'm pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I've thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That's the power of negative thinking.

Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.

I guarantee if you walk into 100 spider webs, you will have changed your fundamental human behavior. And you can apply this to anything, And figure out a way to reprogram yourself, to change your primal fear.

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.

The cool things about space is when you put your pants on here, you can put them on two legs at a time.

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.