All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force.

I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese - and there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them except for one unchanging, certain fact: the best, most skillful pilot has the most experience.

That to me is a bunch of crap trying to shoot guys up into damned space. What they're going to do is they're going to wipe out half a dozen people one of these days, and that will be the end of it.

Hey Ridley, that Machometer is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.

You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up.

I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.

The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best.