You have to compete with others in the field. Sometimes the competition gets pretty fierce because you're competing for funds or grants to do your work, the financial work.

I guess the two things I was most interested in were telescopes and steam engines. My father was an engineer on a threshing rig steam engine and I loved the machinery.

I was interested in telescopes and the way they worked because I had an intense desire to see what things looked like, so I learned how to use telescopes and find things in the sky.

I have a lot of sympathy for young people because I realize how disturbed I was. How would I deal with life in the future? What would I do for a living?

I think there's a supreme power behind the whole thing, an intelligence. Look at all of the instincts of nature, both animals and plants, the very ingenious ways they survive. If you cut yourself, you don't have to think about it.

I was always looking ahead. I used to do all kinds of things for entertainment. When I was young, we had no radio, no TV. We were 30 miles from the public library, out in the sticks in Western Kansas, and so I'd do arithmetic exercises.

I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because... nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since... I was so unprepared for such a strange sight that I was really petrified with astonishment.