The day Apollo 11 landed, I knew men would walk on Mars in my lifetime. I'm no longer nearly so sure. The last budget put forward in Canada contained not a penny for Mars.

Dreams should be forgotten when we wake. Or one day we will find ourselves unable to sleep.

A beginning is the end of something, always.

This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving -- and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever or die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure. This is what it is to be human: to persist.

Information can't be put in any container that isn't leaky.

Just as there are laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other.

To all the Callahan's Places there ever were or ever will be, whatever they may be called — and to all the merry maniacs and happy fools who are fortunate enough to stumble into one: may none of them arrive too late!