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" All of my books tend to be about things going on in labs that you wouldn't really expect. "

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" 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. "

" I think that the women's magazines and a lot of those quick tips for better sex, I think that they do people a disservice, sometimes, because they become very focused on - they're thinking, 'Okay, I read that I should do this, and am I doing it right?' "

" Mushy food is a form of sensory deprivation. In the same way that a dark, silent room will eventually drive you to hallucinate, the mind rebels against bland, single-texture foods, edibles that do not engage the oral device. "

" If I couldn't use food or love to define contentment, I would use reading. "

" 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. "

" Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. 'Stiff' was an oddball book - I mean, a funny book about cadavers? - and I worried that it would be too unconventional. In the end, that's what has made it a success, I think. "

" I could have had a session of defecography, which is a diagnostic test in which X-rays are taken to assess anatomical problems occurring during the process of defecation. I gave it the briefest of thoughts before recognizing that this is beyond the pale - even for me. "

" When I was 16, I had a job on the cleaning crew at a local hospital. I wore a pink uniform and cleaned bathrooms and buffed the hallway linoleum. Oddly, I don't recall hating the job. I recall getting choked up at the end of the summer when I went to turn in my uniform and say goodbye to the ladies. "

" Dead people never seem to address the obvious - the things you'd think they'd be bursting to talk about, and the things all of us not-yet-dead are madly curious about. Such as: 'Hey, where are you now? What do you do all day? What's it feel like being dead? Can you see me? Even when I'm on the toilet? Would you cut that out?' "

" 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. "

" Chew on this: Human teeth can detect a grain of sand or grit 10 microns in diameter. A micron is 1/25,000 of an inch. If you shrank a Coke can until it was the diameter of a human hair, the letter O in the product name would be about 10 microns across. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There are fast chewers and slow chewers, long chewers and short chewers, right-chewing people and left-chewing people. Some of us chew straight up and down, and others chew side-to-side, like cows. Your oral processing habits are a physiological fingerprint. "

" Day by day, I'm kind of a bore. "

" 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. "

" In terms of sustainability and what we eat and what its footprint is on the environment and the consequences of eating one thing versus another, obviously it makes a lot of sense to be eating insects. They're incredibly plentiful. They've got a very short turnover rate. You could be eating termites. "

" 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. "

" A space station is a rangy monstrosity, a giant erector set built by a madman. "

" I believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science. "

" There are three kinds of people in this world: 1) People who make lists, 2) People who don't make lists, and 3) People who carve tiny Nativity scenes out of pecan hulls. I'm sorry, there isn't really a third category; it's just that a workable list needs a minimum of three items, I feel. "

" Because there are now online databases of federally funded research, and these databases are searchable by keyword, sex researchers have to be careful how they title their projects. It's become a simple matter, for those who are so inclined, to find and target researchers whose work they object to on religious grounds. "

" Flatulence peaks twice a day... five hours after lunch and five hours after dinner. "

" 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. "

" 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've been writing full-time since about 1984 - mostly magazine features and columns. "

" Meteorite hunting is not for wimps. The best places to look are also the coldest and windiest. You need very old ice, and you need wind, lots of it, strong and unrelenting. Antarctica fits the bill. "

" Any time you can take a book a little beyond the realm of pure entertainment, I think it's a good thing. But I don't really have it on my to-do list when I write a book. It just evolves naturally during the process of immersing yourself in a subject. "

" In 'Packing for Mars,' I tried to convey the importance of getting young people interested in science. "

" 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. "