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" I write with a sense of my future readers being ever on the verge of setting down the book and pronouncing it a bore. Fear and insecurity are great motivators. "

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" 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. "

Mary Roach

People

End

Focus

" Pet foods come in a variety of flavors because that's what humans like, and we assume our pets like what we like. We're wrong. "

Mary Roach

Wrong

Pet

" 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. "

" 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? "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" One of the maddening ironies of writing books is that it leaves so little time for reading others'. My bedside is piled with books, but it's duty reading: books for book research, books for review. The ones I pine for are off on a shelf downstairs. "

" 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

" 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. "

Mary Roach

Test

Thoughts

" 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

" I don't write on topics that require a lot of urgency. But in 'Stiff,' I wanted to change people's hearts about organ donation. Whenever I get a chance, I try to talk about that. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm one of those goobers who comes out of the polling place actually wearing the 'I VOTED' sticker on my jacket. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" Fletcherizing is gross. I tried it once. I tried to go until it's all liquid, and it just creeps you out to be focusing so much on your chewing. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 rarely listen to music while writing. I wish I could, but it distracts me. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "