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.

I have no regrets about my life. People ask, "If you had to do it all over again, would you do it differently?" No. That's speculation.

Everybody that I've ever seen that enjoyed their job was very good at it.

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.

The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.

There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.

After about 30 minutes I puked all over my airplane. I said to my self, "Man, you made a big mistake."