“I was born in Nashville, Tenn., but I have lived in a number of places...” — Nancy Roman Quote

I was born in Nashville, Tenn., but I have lived in a number of places. In 1937, I moved to Baltimore, Md., where I attended junior high and high school. I lived there for five years before leaving for college.

You cannot exploit the advantages of getting above the atmosphere unless you are able to get up there reasonably large-sized telescopes and unless you are able to keep these telescopes pointing at one region of the sky for long periods of time to a high degree of accuracy.

In 1956, I received an invitation to a dedication of an observatory in the Soviet Union, in Soviet Armenia, as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

It was probably my parents who inspired me most. My father was a scientist and answered my scientific questions, while my mother took me on walks and showed me birds and plants. She also took me out at night and showed me the constellations and the aurora.

I learned from my peers, and I learned from doing projects, and I learned from mentors, but I learned very little from lectures, and I've talked about how little I attended them.

I was a terrible student, but I never missed a music class. In fact, I don't even think I attended most of my gen-ed classes, but I never missed a single music class.

John loved celebrity. We attended an American Film Institute dinner honoring James Cagney, and the room was filled with famous actors like Mae West, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Steve McQueen. John was like a kid in a candy store.

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy.