It was especially hard for me, as a professional pilot. In all of my years of flying - including combat in Korea - this was the first time that my aircraft and I had not come back together. In my entire career as a pilot, 'Liberty Bell' was the first thing I had ever lost.

The flight crew for the orbital mission has been picked, and I'm not on it. Of course I've been feeling pretty low for the past few days. All of us are mad because Glenn was picked.

I was stationed at the flight test center at Wright-Patterson, and I was flying a wide range of airplanes and giving them a lot of different tests. It was a job that I thoroughly enjoyed.

This is what I wanted all along, and after I finished my studies and begun the job of testing jet aircraft, well, there wasn't a happier pilot in the air force.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

Your body must become familiar with its death - in all its possible forms and degrees - as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

I grew up in a funeral home, born and raised, and everyone was always like, 'Well, what was that like?' and I was like, 'It was normal', because it's all I knew.

I only really fake it anymore with sommeliers who are being really snotty to me and I don't want to take their grief and so I try to do something to kind of throw them off or put them on the defensive, even if I don't know what I'm talking about.