Mary Roach Quotes
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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.
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Dead people never seem to address the obvious - the things you'd think they'd be bursting to talk about, and the things all of us not-yet-dead are madly curious about. Such as: 'Hey, where are you now? What do you do all day? What's it feel like being dead? Can you see me? Even when I'm on the toilet? Would you cut that out?'
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The Internet is a boon for hypochondriacs like me.
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To me, death is dark, pain, grief.
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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.
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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?
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Everybody is going to die, so people are enthralled by the possibility that they don't have to completely die, that there is something that comes afterward. It's like if you're going to France for the summer, you're going to read up on it. Everyone just wants to know where they're going, or if they're going anywhere.
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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.
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Day by day, I'm kind of a bore.
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Because there are now online databases of federally funded research, and these databases are searchable by keyword, sex researchers have to be careful how they title their projects. It's become a simple matter, for those who are so inclined, to find and target researchers whose work they object to on religious grounds.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There are people who would love to spend their last ten years, or five years, or whatever it is, on the surface of Mars.
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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.
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When I'm done with a book, I always give it to someone with expertise in the topic and tell them to flag all of my stupid mistakes.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.