Michael Collins > Quotes

“I guess the basic reason I run is that I think a body, like a brain, should be used, stretched, forced to its limits...I feel sorry for those who will never know the desperate pound of 180 beats per minute, or the golden afterglow of recovery from it. The body, like a flying machine, can be operated with greater enjoyment, poise, and confidence if one has explored its limits.”
― Michael Collins

“I am also planning to leave a lot of things undone. Part of life's mystery depends on future possibilities, and mystery is an elusive quality which evaporates when sampled frequently, to be followed by boredom. For example, catching various types of fish is on my list of good things to do, but I would be reluctant to rush into it, even if I had the time. I want no part of destroying fishing as a mysterious sport.”
― Michael Collins

“I felt cold just thinking about that, just how things come to an end, how death is subsumed in the pull of daily life, how a man or woman dies, and life goes on. There were no irrevocable losses.”
― Michael Collins, The Resurrectionists

“... in my opinion, the apogee of the course was surely reached the day we learned how to hold our hands on our hips (doesn’t anyone learn anything at home any more?). Thumbs forward, ladies! Thumbs to the rear, gentlemen! To reverse would not only be gauche (perhaps even worse) but, of course, would result in instant detection and rejection by NASA, the old meanies. I have studied this matter exhaustively in later years, and have found burly construction workers with thumbs forward and mincing fairies with thumbs aft, but then they obviously are not charm-school grads. [Carrying the Fire]”
― Michael Collins

“Norman said, “Sometimes there are no winners and it’s all a wash,” mindful that anything said was enough, and at times, nothing was demanded save the presence of another.”
― Michael Collins, The New Existence

“All the months of calm dispassionate analysis give way to a few minutes of emotion, an outburst of hope and horror as the inert beast comes alive for the first time, shakes itself and its new-found tail of fire, and starts slowly-so slowly-to move. For the first few seconds it is purely a spectacle, for with the eyes alone involved, one can see but not succumb. But when the great crackling Mach 1 roar arrives, and the very ground under you shakes, then you are there, you are part of it, and you laugh or cry or yell or whisper”
― Michael Collins

“Accept and love yourself just the way you are, even when it seems ridiculous, uncomfortable, and counter-intuitive. In fact, especially when it seems ridiculous, uncomfortable, and counter-intuitive.”
― Michael Collins, The Last Resort Sugar Detox Guide: Learn How to Quickly and Easily Detox from Sugar and Stop Cravings Completely

“Cuando le preguntaron qué era la cosa más terrorífica con la que se había encontrando, repuso: "Un folio en blanco".”
― Michael Collins, Death of a Writer

“I don't mean to deny a feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon, I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.”
― Michael Collins

“TLI was what made this flight different from the six Mercury, ten Gemini, and one Apollo flights that had preceded it, different from any trip man had ever made in any vehicle. For the first time in history, man was going to propel himself past escape velocity, breaking the clutch of our earth's gravitational field and coasting into outer space as he had never done before. After TLI there would be three men in the solar system who would have to be counted apart from all the other billions, three who were in a different place, whose motion obeyed difterent rules, and whose habitat had to be considered a separate planet. The three could examine the earth and the earth could examine them, and each would see the other for the first time.”
― Michael Collins , Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journey

“He was suddenly glad now for the internet, for the impersonal expediency of how all matters of life and death could now be so negotiated, the disconnectedness of connectedness. All a real funeral would have revealed was the tacit reality that there had been nobody in his mother’s life for a very long time. She had opted for an insignificant departure, a literal dropping off the earth into the depths of the great lake, seeking the fathoms of her own grave, taking with her the argosy of her dreams, the air pocket of her retirement ending in the literal rising of a water line in the cab of her car. It fit her temperament, the self-contained ending, the tight circle of her own thoughts and ideas, her immense capacity to withhold opinions, to stay in the orbit of her own existence.”
― Michael Collins, The New Existence

“The great truth was that we were not the center of things, or others’ lives, but only so in our own mind’s eye. We were all obscure nobodies at our essence.”
― Michael Collins, The Resurrectionists