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Mary Roach
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#Tags
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
#Know
#Me
#Questions
#Time
#Who Am I
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
#Box
#Chains
#Internet
#Medical
#Search
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.
- Mary Roach
#Like
#Own
#See
#Through
#Your
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.
- Mary Roach
#Fun
#Humor
#Science
#Style
#Work
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.
- Mary Roach
#End
#Goodbye
#Hospital
#Pink
#Uniform
Weightlessness was unbelievable. It's physical euphoria: Nothing about you has any weight. You don't realize that you are weighed down all the time by yourself, and your organs, and your head. Your arms weigh down your shoulders. In space simulation, you get to fly like Superman! You're hanging in the air! It's the coolest thing.
- Mary Roach
#Air
#Fly
#Nothing
#Space
#Time
#Yourself
Every now and then, someone will tell me that one of my books has made them laugh out loud. I never believe them because: a.) my books don't make me laugh out loud; and b.) sometimes I have said this to a writer, when really what I meant was, 'Your book made me smile appreciatively.'
- Mary Roach
#Believe
#Laugh
#Me
#Smile
#Sometimes
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.
- Mary Roach
#Personal
#Problem
#Science
#Sex
#True
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
#Because
#Like
#Pet
#Variety
#Wrong
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.
- Mary Roach
#Done
#Down
#Level
#Lose
#Sense
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.
- Mary Roach
#Best
#Look
#Old
#Places
#Wind
Animals' taste systems are specialized for the niche they occupy in the environment. That includes us. As hunters and foragers of the dry savannah, our earliest forebears evolved a taste for important but scarce nutrients: salt and high-energy fats and sugars. That, in a nutshell, explains the widespread popularity of junk food.
- Mary Roach
#Food
#Important
#Junk Food
#Salt
#Taste
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.
- Mary Roach
#Alive
#Body
#Find
#Human
#Us
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.
- Mary Roach
#Feel
#Needs
#People
#Three
#World
In 'Packing for Mars,' I tried to convey the importance of getting young people interested in science.
- Mary Roach
#Importance
#Mars
#People
#Science
#Young
My husband recently made me try on a bikini. A bikini is not so much a garment as a cloth-based reminder that your parts have been migrating all these years. My waist, I realized that day in the dressing room, has completely disappeared beneath my rib cage, which now rests directly on my hips. I'm exhibiting continental drift in reverse.
- Mary Roach
#Day
#Me
#Now
#Room
#Try
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.
- Mary Roach
#Fast
#Long
#Others
#People
#Slow
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.
- Mary Roach
#Eating
#Insects
#Sense
#Sustainability
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.
- Mary Roach
#Book
#Duty
#Research
#Review
#Time
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.
- Mary Roach
#Grit
#Hair
#Name
#Product
#Sand
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.
- Mary Roach
#Best
#Good
#Home
#Technology
#Walk
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.
- Mary Roach
#Chance
#Change
#Donation
#People
#Try
Gravitation is the lust of the cosmos.
- Mary Roach
#Cosmos
#Gravitation
#Lust
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.
- Mary Roach
#Day
#Dreams
#Good
#Pet
#Walk
I don't fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.
- Mary Roach
#Death
#Fear
#Holiday
#Loneliness
#Pain
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