People From New Hampshire

"Political democracy can remain if it confines itself to all but economic matters."

"Citizens of a modern society need [...] more than that ordinary "common sense" which was defined by Stuart Chase as that which tells you that the world is flat."

"Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power."

"Critics have found in the narrative a veneer of erudition that cloaks nothing more than a James Bond-style romp, albeit a highly addictive one. His publisher has described it as 'a thriller for people who don't like thrillers'. One newspaper put it thus: 'It is terribly written, its characters are cardboard cutouts, the dialogue is excruciating in places and, a bit like a computer manual, everything is overstated and repeated — but it is impossible to put the bloody thing down.'"

"Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code … a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name. … Even Dan Brown must live. Preferably not write, but live."

"The world of publishing is in crisis. It's no coincidence that the worst published writer in the world today is also one of the world's most successful writers... Dan Brown. Now Dan Brown is not a good writer, The Da Vinci Code is not literature. Dan Brown writes sentences like "The famous man looked at the red cup." …and it's only to be hoped that Dan Brown never gets a job where he's required to break bad news. "Doctor is he going to be alright?" "The seventy five year old man died a painful death on the large green table... it was sad"."

"Dan Brown has to be one of the best, smartest, and most accomplished writers in the country. The Da Vinci Code is many notches above the intelligent thriller; this is pure genius."

"I am not an atheist — I think I'm happily confused and a work in progress; I'm sort of more agnostic. I do think that science has become the lens through which we see the world, more and more."

"Google is not a synonym for research."

"Secrets interest us all, I think."

"I never imagined so many people would be enjoying it this much. I wrote this book essentially as a group of fictional characters exploring ideas that I found personally intriguing."

"If I'm not at my desk by 4 AM, I feel like I'm missing my most productive hours. In addition to starting early, I keep an antique hour glass on my desk and every hour break briefly to do pushups, sit-ups, and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing."

"Interestingly, if you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. Some feel being baptized is sufficient. Others feel you must accept the Bible as absolute historical fact. Still others require a belief that all those who do not accept Christ as their personal savior are doomed to hell. Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious — that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress."

"It is other people who want me to win medals."

"I never know what to make of Bode Miller because he is crazy. I'm serious. He is so hard to understand. But I know this: When he is on, he is the perfect skier."

"For me the ideal Olympics would be to go in with all that pressure, all that attention and have performances that are literally tear-jerking, that make people put their heads down because they’re embarrassed at how emotional they’re getting, that make people want to try sports, talk to their kids, call their f---ing ex-wives—and come away with no medals. I think that would be epic. That would be the perfect thing."

"You basically have to trick yourself into incredible intensity to do this stuff, and I do a good job of pretending that I’m racing to save my mom from getting killed or my sister from being raped—some horrible thing that causes me to dig deep, like old-school ‘Braveheart’ s---. If you come into battle with that in your head, you’re gonna be a different person than if you think you’re just going out for a little swordfight. But when you do that for 10 years straight, it wears your a-- out. It’s like crying wolf to yourself a million times. And at some point, you start to say, ‘Why am I doing this?’"

"From this inhuman pressure doping is born because the athlete feels the imperative of having to be No. 1. I believe instead that sport should be a private pressure, a challenge for yourself."

"Anyone who isn’t strong is left in a corner, no one asks for their autograph, they are abandoned in the cold shadows. Those who win, however, become icons."

"Sport is born clean and it would stay that way if it was the athletes who ran it for the pleasure of taking part, but then the fans and the media intervene and finish up by corrupting it with the pressure that they exercise."

"Some people say I make mistakes, I just say that in fact this is the secret of enjoying life. I hate monotony. Why don’t they leave me freedom of choice? People want to impose choices which aren’t necessarily mine. That’s the mistake people make."

"Fame is almost a poison. I couldn’t care less, in fact I lived better when I was a nobody."

"This year I just want to enjoy myself. I could give up tomorrow without having the slightest regret. I could keep away from this world for a year and then perhaps start to feel the desire to prove something to myself again."

"The silver medals I won in Salt Lake City didn’t give me anything. Last year I set myself the goal of winning the World Cup and lining up a long series of wins. It was my private challenge."

"There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back."

"Certainly Shepard's flight was a major moment in American history and it clearly showed we were going to respond to the Soviet challenge."

"Alan Shepard was a great man, a great leader. We were pioneers. If you are an explorer, what more can you ask than to travel into space."

"One can make the argument that the success of the Shepard flight enabled the decision to go to the moon."

"His flight was a tremendous statement about tenacity, courage and brilliance. He crawled on top of that rocket that had never before flown into space with a person aboard, and he did it. That was an unbelievable act of courage."

"His service will always loom large in America's history. He is one of the great heroes of modern America."

"With the passing of Alan Shepard, our nation has lost an outstanding patriot, one of its finest pilots -and I have lost a very close friend."

"Now that we've lost Alan Shepard, I can't help feeling that something is wrong with this picture; astronauts aren't supposed to grow old and leave this Earth forever. In our memories, they remain as Shepard was on that sunny Friday morning in May 1961, when he lay inside a tiny Mercury capsule ready to be hurled into space atop a Redstone booster."

"The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder."

"We're going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space."

"We had some adverse conditions in the '60s, in the '70s and the '80s. The agency has risen above that in the past and will rise above that again."

"The same way people are now paying a couple thousand dollars to fly to other parts of the world, people will be paying $50,000 to spend a weekend on a space station."

"This is the first time that astronauts of the first group have exhibited things that are personal and sentimental to them. We hope it will encourage youngsters to follow in our footsteps."

"I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I'd end up in the pages of history books."

"No way that any astronaut worth his salt volunteered for the space program to become a hero. You don't select astronauts who want fame and fortune. You select them because they're the best test pilots in the world, they know it, and it's a personal challenge for them. And the astronauts of today are exactly the same."

"If we had said 30 years ago that we were going to have only two incidents with casualties, we would have thought, 'Boy, that's great. To me, that indicates that the program has really exceeded what the early expectations were."

"I can hit it farther on the moon. But actually, my swing is better here on Earth."

"I think about the personal accomplishment, but there's more of a sense of the grand achievement by all the people who could put this man on the moon."

"The first one I hit pretty flush with one hand - went about 200 yards. And the second one I shanked, and it rolled into a crater about 40 yards away."

"We need a continuing presence in space."

"I guess those of us who have been with NASA … kind of understand the tremendous excitement and thrills and celebrations and national pride that went with the Apollo program is just something you're not going to create again, probably until we go to Mars."

"I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space."

"There were similarities between these two incidents. The similarity was too much success … over-confidence and complacency, quite frankly."

"I know you're all saying I can go to the moon but I can't find Pasadena."