Kate McKinnon Quotes

I wanted to be an astronomer until I discovered I'm terrible at math.

When I was in high school, I was in a special math class. I was infatuated with physics, particularly nuclear physics, Einstein, and the Big Bang. I read a lot about black holes. And partly because I'm so lazy I thought you could do all this just by looking at the sky and thinking up universes. It didn't seem like hard work when I was a kid, so I enrolled in this class.

I've known from long ago that the universe was calling me. If you were one of those annoying adults that said, 'Oh, what are you gonna be when you grow up?' I would say, 'Astrophysicist.' And then they'd walk away real quickly.

I was good at math, math was my thing - but I was not nearly good enough to be an astrophysicist. I was way outta my league. I realized this very quickly.

A lot of the cosmologists and astrophysicists clearly had been reading science fiction.

I was already studying physics, but Sputnik steered me toward space, cosmology, the Big Bang, and elementary particles.

I think I set myself on a course to become a scientist around about the time that Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series was on television, and there really was no going back for me at that point, and then I went on to study space science and then get my Ph.D., then go aboard and work in the European Space Agency.

I think the driving thing was curiosity about the universe. That fascinated me. I didn't think anything about being famous or anything like that, I was just interested in the concepts involved.

There's a lot of things I nerd out over. Quantum Mechanics. I also love Dungeons and Dragons. I want to be an astronaut.

I actually wanted to be an astronaut, but I don't have a mathematical brain.

It's always a combination of physics and poetry that I find inspiring. It's hard to wrap your head around things like the Hubble scope.

While I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially as rendered in expensive Hollywood blockbusters, it's the real universe that calls to me.

You know what I'm intrigued by? Like, space and wormholes and Stephen Hawking's theories and Richard Dawkins's theories. That's what I care about.

It's hard to imagine anything more interesting than learning how we're woven into the enormous tapestry of existence. Where did our universe come from? How special is our world, and how special are we? We allocate tens of billions of dollars annually to NASA, NSF and academia in search of the answers.

People want to know about what's going on with what's in the universe, what are particles like, what are the basic rules of nature. It's a lot of curiosity out there.

My father has a great love of science, and he indoctrinated me into it early. I think I was 12 or so when we designed a moon base.

I'm a very amateur scientist. For me, it started with the Mercury space program and onward to the moon landing in my impressionable adolescent years.

I'm a person who's very interested in science and the universe and quantum physics and astrophysics.

The natural phenomenon of the universe is so mind-blowing, but you have to know about it. You have to be curious. You've got to find it on your own. If you're lucky, you do.

As a physicist, I've always found cosmology to be a rational elixir; it distances me from ordinary concerns.

I meet astrophysicists almost every week who say that they went into their line of work because of '2001.'

I dreamt of being an astronomer; I had a series of 'How and Why' books on the planets and the stars. At that stage, there were only 14 galaxies; now there are multiverses, dark matter, the nano-microscopic world of the interior of atomic structure.

I was a science fiction geek from an early age, enthralled by the questions of life in the universe. As I got older, I learned that space exploration was real. I wanted to get involved in that. I knew I wanted to be a scientist.

I'm a real nerd for science. I love Neil deGrasse Tyson and 'Cosmos' and all that.

By the time I finished high school, I knew I wanted to become an astronomer. By the time I finished college, I knew I wanted to be part of the American space program. And that's exactly what I did.