Mary Roach

“Hydrogen sulfide is as lethal, molecule for molecule, as cyanide. This may explain why humans evolved such exquisite sensitivity to its smell.”

— Mary Roach

Dead people never seem to address the obvious - the things you'd think they'd be bursting to talk about, and the things…

— Mary Roach

“Could thorough chewing lower the national debt? If saliva is full of bacteria, why do animals lick their wounds? Why don’t suicide…

— Mary Roach

“Humanitarian Benefits of Cadaver Research on Injury Prevention,” Albert King calculated that vehicle safety improvements that have come about as a result…

— Mary Roach

“It’s like a cat trying to imagine the taste of sugar. Cats, unlike dogs and other omnivores, can’t taste sweetness.”

— Mary Roach

“Back in the 1980s when everyone looked a bit off, my friend Tim and his brothers had some publicity shots taken of…

— Mary Roach

“She looks at once like someone who could have worked as a runway model and someone who would be mildly put off…

— Mary Roach

“it is indeed possible for humans to copulate in weightlessness. However, they have trouble staying together. The covert researchers discovered that it…

— Mary Roach

You do not question an author who appears on the title page as "T.V.N. Persaud, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.Path. (Lond.), F.F.Path. (R.C.P.I.),…

— Mary Roach

“Fletcherism. The U.S. Army Medical Department issued formal instructions for a “Method of Attaining Economic Assimilation of Nutriment”—aka the Fletcher system. (“Masticate…

— Mary Roach

“For the forces of any given blast, one type may stretch, say, a fifth of its length without tearing, while another may…

— Mary Roach

“Because it’s hard for people to gauge quality by flavor, they tend to gauge it by price. That’s a mistake. Langstaff has…

— Mary Roach

“I challenge you to find a more innocuous sentence containing the words sperm, suction, swallow, and any homophone of seaman. And then…

— Mary Roach

Picking my topics is sort of a process of elimination for me. Most things don't work for me. I like to cover…

— Mary Roach

“plays a game with his wine-marketing classes at Napa Valley College. The students, most of whom have several years’ experience in the…

— Mary Roach

“There wasn't an anhydrous lacrimal gland in the room...”

— Mary Roach

“If you don’t have a pair of cadaver shoes, you’re not doing enough research.”

— Mary Roach

“freshly dead popes are struck thrice on the forehead with a special silver hammer.”

— Mary Roach

“Humans are better equipped for sight than for smell. We process visual input ten times faster than olfactory.”

— Mary Roach

“To meet pets’ nutrition requirements while also giving humans the cheap, handy, cleanly product they demand, mainstream pet-food manufacturers blend animal fats…

— Mary Roach

“You mean like a small silicone breast implant?” I wasn’t actually thinking that, but sure.”

— Mary Roach

“People who claim lactose intolerance tend to also voice a belief that they’re gluten-intolerant. Usually with no evidence of either.”

— Mary Roach

I could have had a session of defecography, which is a diagnostic test in which X-rays are taken to assess anatomical problems…

— Mary Roach

“Another strategy was to target kids. “The human infant enters the world without information about what is edible and what is not,”…

— Mary Roach

“Under the section heading “Experiments with Human Subjects” – a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I…

— Mary Roach