In 1966, NASA took over in space, and it has been a bureaucratic mess ever since.
You can't always get someone where you want to with just sticks. There have to be some carrots, there have to be some other shaping things.
I go to readings by fiction writers like Alice Walker, and I'm envious of the level of attention they generate.
Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.
Some guys can run fast, some guys can sing, I found I could take photographs that people were interested in.
Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam were perfect for Lyndon Johnson: 220 million against 18 million, water buffalo and all. No risk, really.
And each of these perspectives comes to the same conclusion, which is that our global economy is out of control and performing contrary to basic principles of market economics.
Moreover, statistics can be deceiving: the growth of jobs in the US in the 90s was due to many part-time jobs, with no benefits and generally low pay.
But we can also take the radical view that the test of an economy has to do with the extent to which it is providing everybody with a decent means of living.
The EU will face problems similar to the US: an increasing gap between the citizens and decision makers in Brussels and a perceived or even real lack of democracy.
Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.
The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.
National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like, the first obey a mob, always demented and the second a king, generally sane.
Just the minute the FBI begins making recommendations on what should be done with its information, it becomes a Gestapo.
Without any intended hubris, I've lead a pretty exciting life. What I've tried to do in Mission Compromised is draw on those experiences to create a sense of excitement and realism within the story.
The rocket had worked perfectly, and all I had to do was survive the reentry forces. You do it all, in a flight like that, in a rather short period of time, just 16 minutes as a matter of fact.
America was magnificently characterized in November of 2008 when we elected, for the first time, an African-American President of the United States.
It took me a long time to get selected as an astronaut. In fact, I applied for 20 years before I was selected.
I was tortured fifteen times, that's total submission. They did that with shutting off your blood circulation with ropes, giving you claustrophobia and pain at the same time, bending you double.
Every time the liberals pass a bill - I don't care what it involves - they stick criminal sanctions on it. They don't feel there is any way people are going to keep a law unless they can put them in jail.
Although Patterson Beams was not my first plug-in, I knew from the beginning that I would write it, because the single biggest time consuming factor for me was editing each beam manually.
