I did play the guitar and sing; I was in a band called The Estrogens: three females and one very brave guy.

I read about eastern philosophy and religion and existentialism. All that introspective thinking got me thinking about the great beyond. That turned my sights from inwards to outwards, and I started becoming interested in the makeup of the universe, and I started reading about astronomy, planets, and galaxies.

The Saturn system is a rich planetary system. It offers mystery, scientific insight, and obviously splendour beyond compare, and the investigation of this system has enormous cosmic reach... just studying the rings alone, we stand to learn a lot about the discs of stars and gas that we call the spiral galaxies.

Every type of ring behavior we have seen around Jupiter, Uranus, or Neptune can be found in orbit around Saturn. And Saturn's ring system offers the greatest promise of understanding processes in operation within all disk systems, not just those found around planets.

The Recovery plan will put money in the pockets of the American worker, create and save millions of new jobs and invest in crucial areas such as health care, education, energy independence and a new infrastructure.

A good education is another name for happiness.

There are some folks at the teacher's union who aren't big fans of mine, in part, because I have been open and want to make sure everybody is sitting at the table as we talk about education.

As much as I like teaching and students, it's a kind of rigor, a discipline, that's against my body.