My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Chinese Air Force during World War II and I grew up hearing the pilot stories and seeing pictures of him in uniform.

If you don't trust the pilot don't go.

I wanted to be a pilot. I loved flying and I loved all the technology and the equipment and the sense of adventure that came with it. I think that feeling still bleeds over into everything I do today.

Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been and will continue to be life's pilot. On all sides life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.

So I'm happy to do that because it's a wonderful working relationship but I will be going out for pilot season for half hour work and that's the gamble I'm taking.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics none in which there is more need of good pilotage and of a single unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Very often when I go in to meet for movies or pilots I'm put on videotape. I hate the notion that that tape is going to sit on a shelf and never get better.

When I read the pilot 'for Married with Children' it just reminded me of my Uncle Joe... just a self-deprecating kind of guy. He'd come home from work and the wife would maybe say 'I ran over the dog this morning in the driveway'. And he would say 'Fine what's for dinner?

As a physician and as a pilot I think it lets me be a pretty good translator having one foot in the medical world and one foot in the flying world. Sometimes when the medical guys come in and speak medical stuff to the pilots the pilots really don't know what they're saying.

After you start learning all about the mechanics of piloting a riverboat you stop seeing all the pretty sunsets and you start thinking about the weather.