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" 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. "

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" 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! "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" Rational thought will always trump medieval dogma. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" '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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "