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" 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. "

Mary Roach

Time

New

People

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Spacewalking is a little like rock climbing in that everything, including and especially oneself, must be tethered or docked at all times. If you forget to tether a tool, it's gone. Ditto yourself. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" To keep your he-man jaw muscles from smashing your precious teeth, the only set you have, the body evolved an automated braking system faster and more sophisticated than anything on a Lexus. The jaw knows its own strength. The faster and more recklessly you close your mouth, the less force the muscles are willing to apply. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" For the most part, if somebody approaches me and says, 'I'd like to interview you,' who am I to say no, when I spend all my days going, 'Hello, you don't know me. I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you have a little time?' "

Mary Roach

Say

Know

" My books are not really books; they're endless chains of distraction shoved inside a cover. Many of them begin at the search box of Pub Med, an Internet database of medical journal articles. "

Mary Roach

Internet

Medical

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

Mary Roach

Book

Chemistry

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

" Though it's harder to justify the use of a cadaver for practicing nose jobs than it is for practicing coronary bypasses, it is justifiable nonetheless. Cosmetic surgery exists, for better or for worse, and it's important, for the sake of those who undergo it, that the surgeons who do it are able to do it well. "

" People are surprisingly off put just by saliva, the substance that you carry around in your mouth. You swallow it. You have no objection to it. But then it leaves your body, and you're just revolted. So it - that - just that right there to me is a fascinating thing. "

Mary Roach

Body

Mouth