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" If politicians want to save money, that's fine. They can look for all the wasteful spending they want, but not where the lives of miners are involved. "

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" Throughout my childhood, when I raised my blanket in the morning, I saw a black, sparkling powder float off it. My socks were always black with coal dirt when I took off my shoes at night. "

" My father lost an eye to a snapped cable while trying to rescue trapped miners, though he kept on working for fifteen years afterward. "

" The best way to learn to write is to read in the genre you might be interested in; then, you need to actually sit down and write. In a lot of cases, the first book you write will not get published. Do not get hung up on that. Start a second book. "

" After I'd gotten a year under my belt in college, I thought I'd outgrown my home. "

" I've seen the government up close and personal, and for the most part, it's inefficient and hidebound, and it stifles creativity in any industry it clutches within its well-meaning but slimy tentacles. "

" I want to make the conquest of the moon the United States' goal for the 21st century and, through that goal, to make us a great and good and happy country for generations to come. "

" When the moon was first visited in 1969, the astronauts brought back a treasure trove of unique minerals. Contained within specimens was an isotope called Helium-3, which turns out to be the perfect fuel for fusion reactors. "

" Personally, I've got bigger hopes for NASA. I will stipulate it should keep putting telescopes in space so we can figure out where we fit in the universe, and it should also keep building those little robots that can and do. "

" All my life, everything important that had ever happened had always happened somewhere else. But Sputnik was right there in front of my eyes in my backyard... I felt that if I stretched out enough, I could touch it. "

" 'Rocket Boys,' for one reason or the other, just happened to strike a chord across country and across world, maybe because it's set in a little coal-mining town. That's why NASA likes it - most of the engineers come from towns very similar. "

" NASA's charter is to give Americans the means to get into the wild, black yonder, beyond even the grasp of the federal government that funded it. "

" Glenn's 1962 Mercury flight was fraught with dramatics, from his 'Zero G and I feel fine!' exultation upon entering orbit to his reentry with what was feared was a faulty heat shield. After he safely splashed down, the nation erupted with applause and gratitude not seen since Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic. "

" A memoir is not an autobiography. It's a true story told as a novel, using techniques of novelization. The author is allowed to compress events, combine characters, change names, change the sequence of events, just as if he's writing a novel. But it's got to be true. "

" Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my hometown was at war with itself over its children and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives. "

" I have always found the best way to live is to be optimistic and energetic and willing to work hard for my dreams as well as the dreams of others. "

" Boeing, LockMart, and hundreds of other companies, large and small, work in the space business, and they also create new techniques and technology; but they'd be nowhere if NASA and the Department of Defense hadn't shown the way by funding the first big rockets and satellites. "

" One thing we've learned about space is that the human body starts to fall apart after relatively short exposures to microgravity. "

" I ate supper after Dad saw the evening shift down the shaft, and I went to sleep to the ringing of a hammer on steel and the dry hiss of an arc welder at the little tipple machine shop during the hoot-owl shift. "

" For a country like ours that needs to stay ahead of the world or go under, we must do great, ambitious things - like going to the moon - to survive. "

" To be a great nation and a great people, you have to do great things. "

" After marketing surveys by Universal Studios indicated that 'Rocket Boys' as a movie title would not attract the female over-age-thirty demographic, the film was retitled and released as 'October Sky.' "

" When I began to write my books about Coalwood, I was surprised to discover, upon reflection, that it wasn't an ordinary place at all. "

" My father use to say if coal died, the country died. He was right. Our economy rests on the back of the coal miner. If we did not have the black diamonds of the mountains to burn, we would lose more than half of the nation's energy reserves. "

" What kind of country just recycles its old money, reminisces about what used to be, and doesn't know how to weld, to machine, to cast or to bolt things together? Not one that's on a path to future greatness, that's for certain. "

" Interestingly, 'October Sky' is an anagram of 'Rocket Boys', the same letters just moved around. This was discovered by director Joe Johnston using an anagram program on his computer. "

" When legislators do something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, there's always the suspicion that they're in somebody's pocket. "

" I always give a little talk before I sign books and ask for questions. I love the Q&A sessions. We have a lot of fun at my book signings. I make sure of that! "

" Of all the federal agencies created by Congress, one of the true success stories is the 'Mine Safety and Health Administration', which grew out of a bipartisan effort in 1977. "

" When I was a West Virginia lad of 17, I met a Massachusetts lad of 42 by the name of John F. Kennedy. At the time, I was in a bright orange suit that I had just purchased to wear to the 1960 National Science Fair, where I hoped my home-built rockets would win a medal. Kennedy was in West Virginia trying to win the state's presidential primary. "

" The mining towns I describe in the 'Helium-3' novel series are not unlike Coalwood, but there is one major difference: Those towns, rather than being located in the Appalachian coalfields, are on the moon. "