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" 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. "

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" The broader the topic, the easier it is, not only to fill a book, but to set the bar pretty high for really great stuff. "

" 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. "

" I love words, but I also love finding out that there is a word for something that you've experienced but didn't know there was a word for. Like 'toothpack' - that is a word for when you eat biscuits or cookies and you get that annoying layer of chewed substance on your molars that you kind of have to pick out. "

" I've always been a bit of a space geek. I wrote an article years ago about the neutral buoyancy tank, which is this biblically sized pool where they train astronauts. And it was just the coolest thing. "

" I spend a lot of my time on the phone, pestering people. 'What's new in your lab? Can I come visit your lab? When can I come visit your lab?' I'm basically a professional pesterer. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The Internet is a boon for hypochondriacs like me. "

" If you get a colonoscopy, you should really insist they give you no drugs - then you do get to see what it's like to swim through your own intestines. "

" 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. "

" Picking my topics is sort of a process of elimination for me. Most things don't work for me. I like to cover science and unexpected things happening in labs. Also, theoretical research doesn't work for my style. I need scenes and interactions. Then, humor. I'm having the most fun when I can have fun with my work. "

" 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. "

" Astronauts are like these mythic legends, but really, they are just regular people, people who wear chinos. "

" Bodily fluids and solids are universally the most disgusting things we as human beings can come upon, but as long as they are inside us, it's part of you. "

" 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?' "

" Gravitation is the lust of the cosmos. "

" To me, NASA is kind of the magical kingdom. I was sort of a geek, and you go there, and there are just these wondrously strange things and people. "

" 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.' "

" LOL is rarely OL, or even really L. A real out-loud laugh - not the forced social variety, which is closer to barking than laughing - is uncommon among adults. "

" 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. "

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

" Science is you! It's your head, it's your dog, it's your iPhone - it's the world. How do you see that as boring? If it's boring, it's because you're learning it from a textbook. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If you could really guarantee that the money would be spent on something more worthwhile, I'd say, absolutely, scrap the space program, but it never works that way. "

" All the clothes in my closet are Oakland, California, clothes. You can't wear those anywhere else. The barometric pressure drops and then where are you? "