Mary Roach Quotes: 16

• 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.

• We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.

  Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

• The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.

  Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

• 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 intricacies and realtities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become.

  Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

• Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.

  Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

• Footnote: In 1998, a woman in Saline, Michigan received a patent for a Decorative Penile Wrap...The patent included three pages of drawings, including a penis wearing a ghost outfit, another in the robes of the Grim Reaper, and one dressed up to look like a snowman.

  Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

• The point is that no matter what you choose to do with your body when you die, it won't, ultimately, be very appealing. If you are inclined to donate yourself to science, you should not let images of dissection or dismemberment put you off. They are no more or less gruesome, in my opinion, than ordinary decay or the sewing shut of your jaws via your nostrils for a funeral viewing.

  Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

• I challenge you to find a more innocuous sentence containing the words sperm, suction, swallow, and any homophone of seaman. And then call me up on the homophone and read it to me.

  Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

• think of it.' said Robert Rosenbluth, a doctor whose acquaintance i made at the start of this book. 'no engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine tuned as an anus. to call someone an asshole is really bragging him up.

  Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

• The slang for the rectum is "prison wallet".

  Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

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

  Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

• Gravity disappears again, and we rise up off the floor like spooks from a grave. It's like the Rapture in here every thirty seconds.

  Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

• The simplest strategy for bouts of noxious flatus is to not care. Or perhaps to take advantage of a gastroenterologist I know: get a dog. (To blame.)

  Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

• Not that there's anything wrong with just lying around on your back. In it's way, rotting is interesting too, as we will see. It's just that there are other ways to spend your time as a cadaver.

  Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

• It tastes like water spiked with strange.

  Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

• The human digestive tract is like the Amtrak line from Seattle to Los Angeles: transit time is about thirty hours, and the scenery on the last leg is pretty monotonous.

  Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal