1) ''To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with.''

2) ''It's hard to say why I find Devon Island beautiful. But there are these moments when you're tromping along, head lowered against the wind, and your eye lands on a hump of moss with tiny red flowers like cupcake sprinkles, and you're just walloped by the sight. Maybe it's the unlikely heroics of something so delicate surviving in a place so stingy and hard. Maybe it's just the surprise of color.''

3) ''I was looking at the Columbia patch. The seven crew members' last names were stitched around the perimeter: MCCOOL RAMON ANDERSON HUSBAND BROWN CLARK CHAWLA. Clark. Something clicked in my head. When I had first arrived on Devon Island, I'd heard that the spouse of one of the Columbia astronauts would be here. Laurel Clark was Jon Clark's wife, I now realized. I didn't know whether to say something, or what that something would or should be. The moment passed, and Clark kept talking.''

4) '''The test of a good friend was to hand the bag to your crewmate and have him get that germicide completely mushed in with the fecal material,' Gemini and Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell told me. 'I'd go, 'Here, Frank, I'm busy.''''