Quotes from Wally Funk

I was taught that you could do anything if you wanted it badly enough.

My feelings are 'Godspeed, John Glenn.' But I feel badly that he took a spot away from a young astronaut who had probably waited three or four years for that slot. He's already had his ticker-tape parade.

I've never been bitter.

Well, 'aerospace' was really not a name in my young life. Flying airplanes was. And I got my first try at flying - just pure flying - by flying my 'Superman' cape off my daddy's barn when I was about 5 years old.

I'm just disappointed the folks never took a picture of me when I was five years old jumping off the barn into a haystack with my Superman cape.

I first flew in a plane at eight, and by the age of 10 I had mother drive me out to an airstrip to study the planes parked there.

As a flight instructor 30 years ago, I had quite a few female police officers who wanted to be pilots. But the guys would say 'no.' They wanted those jobs to themselves.

Russia will have a woman in space before the United States calls for a crash program for women astronauts.

I was a very, very curious kid.

I've been in the Concorde, I've seen the curvature of the Earth, the beginning of the darkness. I want more - I want to go up there.

I can take anything. You can whip me and it won't bother me.

I wanted to go into exploration. I've always been an explorer in my youth.

You know me, I go higher, faster, larger, as long as I can.

We hadn't been to space yet, so there was no idea what the human body would have to endure in terms of stress. That's why they tested us to the limit.

I took probably about six or seven different tests throughout the U.S. Then I went to Russia and took the cosmonaut tests. I beat all the guys.

I love flying. That's my job. That's what I love.

When I went on to college, I was allowed to take flying, as my mother had dearly loved flying and her father wouldn't allow her to, so they encouraged me then to go on into my aviation career.

I've been flying forever and I have 19,600 flying hours.

What I am already dreaming about is the roar of the take-off, followed by the absolute silence as we go into orbit, and then seeing Earth outside my window.

I'm a positive person. Things were cancelled? So what? Wally's going on. Why are people so negative? I'm not a quitter.

Nothing has ever gotten in my way. They say, 'Wally, you're a girl, you can't do that.' I said, 'Guess what, doesn't matter what you are, you can still do it if you want to do it,' and I like to do things that nobody's ever done before.

I want to go up there so bad, I've had my sights set since 1962.

A skiing accident got me into all this. Since I was a physical education major and this limited by physical activity. I took up flying.

My first ride in an airplane was at nine years of age, and it was wonderful: the freedom, the smell of the exhaust, the air going over my hair... It was me. It was part of me.