“I've discovered that half the people would love to go into space and there's no need to explain it to them. The other half can't understand and I couldn't explain it to them. If someone doesn't know why, I can't explain it.”

“For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences.”

“All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.”

“Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue.”

“I did not come to NASA to make history.”

“I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science.”

“Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in.”

“The view of Earth is spectacular.”

“I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.”

“The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.”

“No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.”