Mary Roach Quotes

71 quotes in 1293 categories

• One young woman's tribute describes unwrapping her cadaver's hands and being brought up short by the realization that the nails were painted pink. "The pictures…
• Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education and…
• Hormones are nature's three bottles of beer.
• Sexual desire is a state not unlike hunger.
• In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose…
• The nobility of the human spirit grows harder for me to believe in. War, zealotry, greed, malls, narcissism. I see a backhanded nobility in excessive,…
• I am very much out of my element here. There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am…
• Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.
• I began thinking about my skeleton, this solid, beautiful thing inside me that I would never see.
• 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…
• To me, death is dark, pain, grief.
• Astronauts are like these mythic legends, but really, they are just regular people, people who wear chinos.
• I talk to a lot of people who, when you try to sum them up in a couple of sentences, seem like they must be…
• The Internet is a boon for hypochondriacs like me.
• 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 believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science.
• I rarely listen to music while writing. I wish I could, but it distracts me.
• Eighty percent of flavor comes from your nose, including a set of internal nostrils. When you chew food and hold it in your mouth, the…
• Flatulence peaks twice a day... five hours after lunch and five hours after dinner.
• 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…

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