Quote

Life contains these things: leakage and wickage and discharge, pus and snot and slime and gleet. 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.

Mary Roach

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Mary Roach
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 20
Author
Journalist
Medical Writer
Writer
Etna
New Hampshire
Beginning
Birth
Leakage
Forget
Snot
Death
Slime
Ends
Discharge
Things
Reminded
Life
Contains
Biology

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The writing is always the easy part, provided I can get the good material. It's the getting of the good material that's a challenge.
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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.), F.A.C.O.G.
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Yet if you don't understand the physiology of a biological system or process-like female sexual arousal-you can't possibly come up with a way to fix it when things go wrong. No one would have come up with a treatment for diabetes if physiologists hadn't figured out how metabolism, blood sugar, and insulin work.
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NASA might do well to adopt the Red Bull approach to branding and astronautics. Suddenly the man in the spacesuit is not an underpaid civil servant he's the ultimate extreme athlete. Red Bull knows how to make space hip.
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Viagra does have a physiological effect, but it doesn't make women feel aroused. Nowadays, researchers are looking at drugs that affect the central nervous system rather than blood flow to the genitals.
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I've read plenty of amazing science pieces where the writers don't hang out in labs. I just have fun doing it. And I get rewarded for it I get gushy, especially when kids tell me they expected to be bored by my books, but weren't.
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It's this mood, these sentiments - the excitement of exploration and the surprises and delights of travel to foreign locales - that I hope to inspire with this book.
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Sexual desire is a state not unlike hunger.
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If you could really guarantee that the money would be spent on something more worthwhile, I'd say, absolutely, scrap the space program, but it never works that way.
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Softball is the reason Washing Machines and Bleach are so popular. Don't think so? Just ask a softball Mom.
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Sharing a room with a cadaver is only mildly different from being in a room alone. They are the same sort of company as people across from you on subways or in airport lounges, there but not there. Your eyes keep going back to them, for lack of anything more interesting to look at, and then you feel bad for staring.
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Bodily fluids and solids are universally the most disgusting things we as human beings can come upon, but as long as they are inside us, it's part of you.
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Hormones are nature's three bottles of beer.
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In 'Packing for Mars,' I tried to convey the importance of getting young people interested in science.
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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.
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Every mode of travel has its signature mental aberration.
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Masters points out that the heterosexuals were at a disadvantage, as they do not benefit from what he called “gender empathy”. Doing unto your partner as you would do unto yourself only works well when you're gay.
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Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.
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Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to.
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