When I saw the Earth from above, personally, as a spacecraft operator, it certainly reinforced and drove home the fact that there's one place where we can live right now. The seven billion of us are sharing a wonderful planet, and it's an absolute privilege to see it from above.

Definitely you don't become famous by doing something bad; that's a professional death sentence.

You're always under the microscope, you don't know which mission you're going to get. It's a surprise.

The opportunities to become an astronaut in Canada were far and few.

When you're a little different than others, it takes a little more time to fit in. If you really want to be there, there are no ingredients you need other than effort, perseverance and teamwork.

If anything, when you're up in space and you're inside a space ship, which is your home, and without which you would not survive, you know that Earth is your home. This is the only place you can return. In fact we're very meticulous. Part of our job is to maintain the spaceship. If we apply the same kind of model to Earth maybe we'd have a different outlook.

On the day a country decides not to invest a cent in innovation, discovery or exploration, that country decides to be a tributary to others.