Leroy Chiao Quotes

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.

The thing I remember most about space is the view from the spacewalk. When I was inside the space shuttle and looking through the window, you can see the earth and the stars, and it's very beautiful, but it's like looking at an aquarium, sort of. When you go outside and spacewalk, you become a scuba diver.

When we're doing the space walks, we're working very very hard. Every single minute is choreographed. But there's a few minutes here and there where ground is maybe talking about something, and you have to put your tools down and wait. Just getting a chance to look through your visor and see the planet go by was incredible.

I would die to record in space. That would be the coolest. If I got the option of, going into outer space and hanging out there for a day, and then coming back home and dying the next day, or just waiting around to see if there's any opportunity for the technology to develop so that I might experience outer space sometime in the future, I would probably take the ride today and die tomorrow. I'd be happy just hanging out between the moon and the Earth, getting a view.

You can't just ignore spacewalking suit; it partially defines the experience. So maybe the most difficult thing is becoming completely attuned to efficiently wearing a garment that is so inhibiting to motion, and making it look effortless, as if it's the most natural thing to be out there on a spacewalk.

Animals see the unobstructed world with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned back upon themselves, encircle and seek to snare the world, setting traps for freedom.

It's beautiful," said Mort softly. "What is it?" THE SUN IS UNDER THE DISC, said Death. "Is it like this every night?" EVERY NIGHT, said Death. NATURE'S LIKE THAT. "Doesn't anyone know?" ME. YOU. THE GODS. GOOD, ISN'T IT? "Gosh!" Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world. I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.

Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.

Why did you look at the sunset?' Philip answered with his mouth full: Because I was happy.

As for me, I believe that if there's a God - and I am as neutral on the subject as is possible - then the most basic proof of His existence is black humor. What else explains it, that odd, reliable comfort that billows up at the worst moments, like a beautiful sunset woven out of the smoke over a bombed city.

Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite ‘telescope envy’ at gatherings of amateur astronomers.

In the Ridley Scott film 'The Martian' you can do that [virtually driving car]. I have lifted off in the space craft from the surface of Mars, walked in space and looked down into deep space and got terrified, with the headphones and the goggles.

OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

At this sunset hour, the canyon walls are indescribably beautiful and I fear the magic of photography can never record what I see now. The tall spires near the canyon's top and the walls of the canyon up there look as if God had reached out and swiped a brush of golden paint across them, gilding these rocks in the bright glow of the setting sun.

There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.

As the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful; and the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath like space and time, make all matter gay.

I have no sense of direction; I never know where I am. When I back up a car, I'm more likely to hit what's behind me than not, because I have no vision for it. I've never been able to play games or play cards because I can't in my head get the next move. I've never been able to balance a checkbook. So there's some brain damage, but it may be that very brain damage that allows me to do the work I do. I've never met a cartoonist who isn't quirky or weird in some ways.

I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is ... for 26 years I had never really looked at it before.

Why cat were given such terrific peripheral vision when they spend so much time looking down their noses is difficult to understand.

The death-bed of a day, how beautiful!

That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.

I believe that... my first successes in my out-of-focus pictures were a fluke. That is to say, that when focusing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon.

When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!

You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details.

I use visual perception as a way of bringing people into my space.