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" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Sky
Rocket
October
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" My dad was a miner, but he was very much an intellectual. He loved to read. "
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Read
Much
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" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Gratitude
Feel
Flight
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Look
Want
Involved
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
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" Coalwood, West Virginia, is the little coal-mining town where I grew up, and it was there that five other teenage boys and I famously built and launched rockets. I recounted this story in my memoir, 'Rocket Boys.' "
Homer Hickam
Rocket
Story
Up
" 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! "
Homer Hickam
Love
Questions
Always
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Books
Place
Reflection
" I grew up listening to my dad, a miner who rose through the ranks to be the mine superintendent in Coalwood, W.V. , yelling orders into his black company phone. He wanted to get coal out of the ground and into coal cars and on its way to steel mills. "
Homer Hickam
Rose
Company
Phone
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Something
Always
Somebody
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Energy
Black
Mountains
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Best
You
Start
" '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. "
Homer Hickam
Country
Engineers
Reason
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
My Life
Eyes
Enough
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Ahead
Great
Moon
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Country
Good
Great
" Rational thought will always trump medieval dogma. "
Homer Hickam
Always
Dogma
Rational
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Be True
Story
True
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
True
Health
Safety
" To be a great nation and a great people, you have to do great things. "
Homer Hickam
Great
You
People
" One thing we've learned about space is that the human body starts to fall apart after relatively short exposures to microgravity. "
Homer Hickam
Learned
Space
Short
" After I'd gotten a year under my belt in college, I thought I'd outgrown my home. "
Homer Hickam
Year
Belt
Thought
" Rather than being an impediment, NASA can and should be the driver of commerce, the provider of the technology necessary to make some big money in space. The truth is that private enterprise already has a huge presence up there. "
Homer Hickam
Truth
Truth Is
Technology
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
War
Brother
Children
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Future
Greatness
Together
" Remember, it isn't the dreamers who have good lives - it's the doers. Remember also what I call the three Ps of success: passion, planning, and perseverance. "
Homer Hickam
Success
Good
Passion
" Tired of burning fossil fuel and polluting the planet? The moon is covered with helium 3, an isotope from the sun that is the perfect fuel for clean fusion reactors. "
Homer Hickam
Planet
Perfect
Moon
" Persevere with a plan to reach your passion, and life will be good. "
Homer Hickam
Will
Good
Reach
" 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.' "
Homer Hickam
Rocket
Marketing
Film
" 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. "
Homer Hickam
Government
NASA
Wild
" The time frame is summer 1961, a year after the gold medal in the National Science Fair. I always saw my 'Coalwood' books as a trilogy. This book finishes the story of my life in Coalwood. I think it's the best of the three. "
Homer Hickam
Life
Science
Best