Julie Payette Quotations

My husband and I don't worry about each other the way we might if we didn't have similar jobs. I sometimes get an email where he tells me he's heading off on a mission to do terrain avoidance 50 feet above the ground at 500 knots. And I just say, "Okay, have a good flight."

I am definitely a little more nervous for my colleagues when I'm working at mission control than I am myself, on the shuttle.

Most people here don't have a wide emotional range. It's just the type of people astronauts are, they're required to be level.

Nobody is going anywhere in 10 years.

The opportunities to become an astronaut in Canada were far and few.

A lot of people, I think, would love to see the earth from above, wear a spacesuit. Certainly, when I was a kid, I wanted to wear a spacesuit.

Definitely you don't become famous by doing something bad; that's a professional death sentence.

I'm 45, and I'm still at school, essentially. Even after being assigned to the mission, I had to write a number of exams, with people commenting on my performance.

You're always under the microscope, and you don't know which mission you're going to get. It's a surprise.