Words matter. These are the best Mary Roach Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Most of the people who are engaged in the subjects that I look into are pretty interesting. Whether its sex researchers or someone who’s devoted their career to saliva or somebody who does research with cadavers, there’s an inherent fascination in the subject matter of their work.
I didn’t really realize that writing… would be fun and people would pay you to do it. Being an astronaut is a glory profession, and so is writing, in a way.
I’m a science goober.
Most of us pass our lives never once laying eyes on our own organs, the most precious and amazing things we own. Until something goes wrong, we barely give them thought. This seems strange to me. How is it that we find Christina Aguilera more interesting than the inside of our own bodies?
Ultimately, the problem is that sex is perceived as a personal, intimate thing, not in the realm of science. But that’s not true. It’s physiology; it’s anatomy. It deserves to be studied.
A space station is a rangy monstrosity, a giant erector set built by a madman.
Flatulence peaks twice a day… five hours after lunch and five hours after dinner.
It seems odd to think of tasting without any perceptive experience, but you are doing it right now. Humans have taste receptor cells in the gut, the voice box, the upper esophagus. But only the tongue’s receptors report to the brain.
Eighty percent of flavor comes from your nose, including a set of internal nostrils. When you chew food and hold it in your mouth, the gases that are released goes into these nostrils. People who wolf their food are missing some of the flavor.
You won’t see me writing about particle physics, or even planetary geology, or chemistry. I practically failed chemistry, and if I had to write a book in any of those areas, I don’t think it would go well.
A fine book, in the perfect setting, when there’s all the time in the world to read it: Life holds greater joys, but none come to mind just now.
When someone tells me, ‘Oh, we have so many problems on Earth; space exploration costs too much money,’ I say, ‘I absolutely agree with you. But I still hope we do it.’
Will I switch to E-reading? I won’t, mainly because I love the look and feel of books – particularly hardbacks. I love them enough to put up with the minor hassles of lugging them around and maneuvering them in my lap and having to set them aside while I eat my cheeseburger.
Saliva has antibacterial properties. It also has things called nerve growth factor, skin growth factor, histatins which help with wound closure. So when you see an animal licking a wound or even a mom kissing a child’s boo-boo, there’s some, there’s some good science behind why one might do this.
Everybody is going to die, so people are enthralled by the possibility that they don’t have to completely die, that there is something that comes afterward. It’s like if you’re going to France for the summer, you’re going to read up on it. Everyone just wants to know where they’re going, or if they’re going anywhere.
Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that’s what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample.
When you buy my books, you kind of know what you’re in for. It’s kind of self-selecting. If you have a delicate sensibility, and you’re easily grossed out, you probably will never read one of my books.
People don’t appreciate their intestines until something goes wrong. But I always hope that people gain a little appreciation for their guts.
For the scientists, they’re kind of puzzled and pleased that somebody finds their work interesting. It makes it fun for me. I feel like I’ve sort of turned over a stone that hasn’t been turned over.
Gravitation is the lust of the cosmos.
We exist in this weirdly schizo culture, where sex is everywhere in the media, and yet, at the same time, you don’t sit down and have a conversation about what you did in bed last night with your friends. Despite the ubiquity of sex, it’s still a taboo when it comes to day-to-day conversation.
If I couldn’t use food or love to define contentment, I would use reading.
I think by and large, humans prefer to think of themselves as minds from the neck up. We don’t really like to think of ourselves as another animal, another digesting, excreting, mating, snoring, sleeping kind of sack of guts. I don’t think we like that. I think we’d rather not be reminded of it.
Every crazy fad from the 1800s comes back or they never go away. It’s like fashion, like everything’s already been invented, and somebody stumbles onto it and people will always, always be looking for an answer for some vague illness they can’t get a diagnosis for.
I make lists to keep my anxiety level down. If I write down 15 things to be done, I lose that vague, nagging sense that there are an overwhelming number of things to be done, all of which are on the brink of being forgotten.
I get really excited about specific therapies, personalized therapies. Like, let’s say, taking a piece of someone’s tumor and testing a bunch of treatments in a lab and being able to come up with the right therapy for that specific patient.
I believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science.
I’m not a quick wit. I’m only funny on paper. I mean, I’m not totally humorless! It’s just that in person, I’m not quite the way I am on paper.
It is interesting to come across people who feel that a ghost communicating via a spell-checker is less far-fetched than a software glitch.
I’m drawn to the taboos that surround the human body. I find it fascinating that we are repelled by many of the acts and processes that keep us alive.
Literally thousands of e-mails over the course of a book go out to people I’ve never met, people who might end up being the focus of a chapter.
I have a nice little office, with a nice little window in it, but I do basically spend huge amounts of time in what you could consider solitary confinement.
I don’t read good books anymore, it seems; I just buy them and put them on the shelf and every now and then walk over and pet them. I’m like the optimistic dieter who fills her closet with clothes two sizes too small and dreams of the day she can wear them. I know just what I want to do when I retire.
When I’m done with a book, I always give it to someone with expertise in the topic and tell them to flag all of my stupid mistakes.
They say that women’s sexual peaks are in their 30s or 40s, and I think that it happens because they’re more comfortable. It’s not some hormonal change that happens at that age. Of course, it would be nice to have more physiological insight on that.
I don’t know of many people who’ve done sex research with an eye toward people saying sex is bad for you, except for the promiscuity and cervical cancer link – which is actually a valid discovery.
I talk to a lot of people who, when you try to sum them up in a couple of sentences, seem like they must be insane.
I had a bike accident a few years ago, and I went to the emergency room, and I had to have a gash sewn up. And I am the kind of person that I was sitting up fascinated, watching, to the extent that the doctor said, ‘Do you want to do a couple of stitches? You seem to be very interested.’
I’m always imposing my taste in books on others. I hope that people enjoy being surprised by a book they might not otherwise read – I enjoy the surprise myself when others do this to me.
I used to do my best thinking while staring out airplane windows. The seat-back video system put a stop to that. Now I sit and watch old’ Friends’ and ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ episodes. Walking is good, but here again, technology has interfered. I like to listen to iTunes while I walk home. I guess I don’t think anymore.
