60 Quotes by Homer Hickam

Remember, it isn't the dreamers who have good lives - it's the doers. Remember also what I call the three Ps of success: passion, planning, and perseverance.

Interestingly, 'October Sky' is an anagram of 'Rocket Boys', the same letters just moved around. This was discovered by director Joe Johnston using an anagram program on his computer.

Coalwood, West Virginia, is the little coal-mining town where I grew up, and it was there that five other teenage boys and I famously built and launched rockets. I recounted this story in my memoir, 'Rocket Boys.'

To be a great nation and a great people, you have to do great things.

I've seen the government up close and personal, and for the most part, it's inefficient and hidebound, and it stifles creativity in any industry it clutches within its well-meaning but slimy tentacles.

I have always found the best way to live is to be optimistic and energetic and willing to work hard for my dreams as well as the dreams of others.

When I was a West Virginia lad of 17, I met a Massachusetts lad of 42 by the name of John F. Kennedy. At the time, I was in a bright orange suit that I had just purchased to wear to the 1960 National Science Fair, where I hoped my home-built rockets would win a medal. Kennedy was in West Virginia trying to win the state's presidential primary.

When I was a boy, one of my favorite places to go was a pine-filled hollow high on the mountain behind our house. It was a place where the industrial song of Coalwood subsided. I would sit on a dead log and listen to nothing except the beating of my own heart and the thoughts racing through my head.

Persevere with a plan to reach your passion, and life will be good.