Our role is to develop techniques that allow us to provide emergency life-saving procedures to injured patients in an extreme, remote environment without the presence of a physician.

Most budget airlines anywhere in the world are going to leave you dissatisfied after using them.

As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time.

It's good to have a fear of heights. I mean, it's kind of crazy not to because if you just lean out a little bit and there's a gust of wind or somebody bumps you or something and you fall, you're splat.

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.

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.