Mary Roach Quotes

People think when you're moving in Zero-G, it's like moving in jelly. But it's not. You're completely free to move however fast as you want.

It's easy to sleep floating around - it's very comfortable. But you have to be careful that you don't float into somebody or something!

Weightlessness was unbelievable. It's physical euphoria: Nothing about you has any weight. You don't realize that you are weighed down all the time by yourself, and your organs, and your head. Your arms weigh down your shoulders. In space simulation, you get to fly like Superman! You're hanging in the air! It's the coolest thing.

Your arms don't hang by your side in space like they do on Earth because there is no gravity. It feels awkward to have them floating in front of me.

I wanted to be in an anti-gravity machine so bad! Maybe a different time, a different place.

The coolest thing for me is the experience of floating and not feeling my weight. And hanging by a window just after sunset and watching the stars in the big black dome of the sky as the earth moves underneath.

The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

I'm really looking forward to it, if you can imagine floating weightless, watching the world pour by through the big bay window of the space station playing a guitar; just a tremendous place to think about where we are in history.

My dream has always been to suspend myself in space when I write, and lying horizontal in bed is the closest to doing that.

I'd like to levitate.

I defy gravity.

After the horse dance was over, it seemed that I was above the ground and did not touch it when I walked.

I still dream about being on the space station with the feeling of being weightless. The weightlessness is the most amazing, relaxing and natural feeling.

Life as an astronaut in space is a very interesting one. There are things we all take for granted here on earth, like gravity, that can make things a bit challenging. One of the fun things about getting here is the zero gravity and floating around. But it also makes things very difficult.

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.

I think if I had to choose, I would rather have gravity instead of zero gravity. It's fun for a while, but I'd rather live on Earth.

That's really why I want to go to space - I want to be weightless for so long that it gets boring.

To be able to float and move around and, pretty much effortlessly, do whatever you want with your body in space is pretty amazing.

So here in space, obviously, in microgravity, we have to use our hands to get ourselves around, to float around the modules, because our feet, we don't necessarily walk around, we just grab hand holds and move ourselves around, which means that we need our hands free to do just that.

After floating for nine and a half months in space, gravity is not your friend.

The one thing we can't really train for is weightlessness, real weightlessness. It's a ton of fun. It's pure Newtonian physics. You push in one direction, you go in the opposite direction with an equal force.

Two hundred miles from the surface of the earth there is no gravity. The laws of motion are suspended. You could turn somersaults slowly slowly, weight into weightlessness, nowhere to fall. As you lay on your back paddling in space you might notice your feet had fled your head. You are stretching slowly slowly, getting longer, your joints are slipping away from their usual places. There is no connection between your shoulder and your arm. You will break up bone by bone, fractured from who you are, drifting away now, the centre cannot hold.

The feeling of gravity on your body and then off your body is so traumatic. But incredible. We with Tom Cruise were just like, "Let's do this, let's have an adventure - let's make something beautiful onscreen." No wires. Let's not cheat the audience.

I experimented with all possible maneuvers-loops, somersaults and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill, distorted laugh. Nothing I did altered the automatic rhythm of the air. Delivered from gravity and buoyancy, I flew around in space.

I want to be the rock that floats.