Quotes from Alan Bean

But I'm the only one who can paint the moon, because I'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not.

I found I have to stay painting.

I believe that 100, 200, 300 years from now, all these paintings will be around because they're the first paintings of humans doing things off this Earth.

I feel blessed every day when I'm working on these paintings... the first artist to ever go to another world and try to tell stories that people care about.

I do not believe that anyone from outer space has ever visited the Earth.

I had the good fortune and the gift to be one of the 12 men to walk on the moon.

I can remember walking on the moon.

At one-sixth gravity in that suit, you have to move in a different way.

I think everything depends on money.

I find it curious that I never heard any astronaut say that he wanted to go to the Moon so he would be able to look back and see the Earth. We all wanted to see what the Moon looked like close up. Yet, for most of us, the most memorable sight was not of the Moon but of our beautiful blue and white home, moving majestically around the sun, all alone and infinite black space.

We cannot relive Apollo, but we can preserve its legacy; we can continue to tell the story.

On Earth, I weighed 150 pounds; my suit and backpack weighed another 150. 300 pounds. Up there, I weighed only 50. So I could prance around on my toes. It was quite easy to do.

Just like some day, say, 1000 years from now, when we can go to another star and see a planet, that's what we would do because we will know how to cure cancer, cure birth defects, so we would teach them.

Frequently on the lunar surface I said to myself, 'This is the Moon, that is the Earth. I'm really here, I'm really here!'

I have the nicest life in the world.

As I ran along, I remember... saying to myself, 'You know, this is really the moon. We're really here... That's the Earth up there.' And I said it two or three times to myself.

We're going through all the checklist, getting in position to make the entry and all that... And I think either Pete, Dick, or I said, 'Well, I wonder how those parachutes are doing?' And then someone else said... 'Well, we'll find out in about 55 minutes!'

We knew it was going to be difficult to get to the moon. We didn't know how difficult.

If you remember back to some of the television we saw, Buzz and Neil on the Moon with Apollo 11. Black and white. They were bouncing around a lot. They were really bouncing on their tip toes. Quite fun to do.

I was more of a person that liked flying and operating high-performance machinery, and I liked that, the skill it took, the intelligence it took to do that.

I feel like there's too many paintings left unpainted that I just don't want to take the time away.

I would say I had zero philosophical thoughts at that time. I was operating on a timed checklist that we've been trained to do, to try to maximize every really minute on the moon.

Eventually there are going to be cities in space.

The moon is very rugged.