I am a stranger. I come in peace. Take me to your leader and there will be a massive reward for you in eternity.

There had been a number of failures but we weren't going out to ride a failure. And we felt they'd corrected all the difficulties with the boosters before that time and the launch problems. And so we had a lot of confidence that there was going to be a successful mission. We weren't off on some suicide effort, certainly.

I suppose the one quality in an astronaut more powerful than any other is curiosity. They have to get some place nobody's ever been.

Just because I'm 77 doesn't mean I don't have a dream.

Americans just want us to... not be concerned if they can be constitutionally justified... Why, if we had to do that we could not pass most of the laws we enact around here.

We had an airplane, a Beechcraft Baron, that we - I had since 1981. And Annie [Glenn] and I both of had to have knee replacements unfortunately over the past year, and it made it more difficult to climb up on the airplane. We weren't using it that much so we did - it hurt a lot but I finally sold the airplane.

I think we're a long ways from really putting colonies of people out there who would live their whole lives out there in space. I don't see that happening for quite some time.