If we want scientists and engineers in the future, we should be cultivating the girls as much as the boys.

The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it.

Well, we spend an awful lot of our time working and doing experiments. It's very busy up on the shuttle.

It was a real honor for me to get to be the first woman astronaut. I think it's really important that young girls that are growing up today can see that women can be astronauts too. There have actually been a lot of women, who are astronauts, that that's a career that's open to them.

I haven't written my memoirs or let the television movie be made about my life.

One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.

I have been a bit of a risk-taker all my life.