“Q: What were you thinking when your colleagues were out there making cosmic history?A: I just kept reminding myself that every single component in this spacecraft was provided by the guy who submitted the cheapest tender.”

“I guess the basic reason I run is that I think a body, like a brain, should be used, stretched, forced to its limits...I feel sorry for those who will never know the desperate pound of 180 beats per minute, or the golden afterglow of recovery from it. The body, like a flying machine, can be operated with greater enjoyment, poise, and confidence if one has explored its limits.”

“I'm taking inorganic chem and physics not because I want to but because I have to. Not every doctor wants to be a scientist. Some of us just want to take care of sick people. I can't help thinking that medicine is more closely aligned to the humanities than to the sciences. I can't help thinking that I could learn more about being a good doctor from William Shakespeare than I could from Isaac Newton. After all, isn't understanding people at least as important as understanding pathology?”

“Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it... And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day.”

“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.”

“It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected...I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing...I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic.”

“Well, I think we all started off as ash, astral ash; the Big Bang and all that. You and I - stardust. Maybe a little piece of me and a little piece of you were once companions on some great cosmic dust making its way to this rock.”