Quote

My father was a chemist on the Yale faculty, my mother a housewife.

Nobody in real life ever takes me seriously.

My parents, once I made it clear to them that I wanted to do science, they were totally sympathetic.

When I was in college at Carnegie Mellon, I wanted to be a chemist. So I became one. I worked in a laboratory and went to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. Then I taught science at a private girls' school. I had three children and waited until all three were in school before I started writing.

At the age of 12, my parents gave me a chemistry set for Christmas, and experimentation soon became a consuming passion in my life.

Nobody took me too seriously but I was grown up even as a baby.

I was this little blond girl with a guitar case bigger than me - it was pink and sparkly at the time. But I always took myself seriously, and I think that people took that seriously. I would tell them about my goal list, and they listened. I was like, 'I want to be the one that swings the pendulum.'

The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women.

I dropped chemistry. I practically blew up the lab in college.