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

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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'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. "

" 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. "

" Rational thought will always trump medieval dogma. "

" I have the best fans of any author in the country and they deserve the best from me, too! "

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

" Persevere with a plan to reach your passion, and life will be good. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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! "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I was a boy, one of my favorite places to go was a pine-filled hollow high on the mountain behind our house. It was a place where the industrial song of Coalwood subsided. I would sit on a dead log and listen to nothing except the beating of my own heart and the thoughts racing through my head. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My dad was a miner, but he was very much an intellectual. He loved to read. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "