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You won't see me writing about particle physics, or even planetary geology, or chemistry. I practically failed chemistry, and if I had to write a book in any of those areas, I don't think it would go well.

Mary Roach

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Mary Roach
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: March 20
Author
Journalist
Medical Writer
Writer
Etna
New Hampshire
Writing
Chemistry
Even
Failed
Would
Physics
Think
Areas
Planetary
Thinking
Write
Particle
Wells
Geology
Book
Particles
Well
Practically

More quotes by Mary Roach

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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.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach
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Every mode of travel has its signature mental aberration.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach
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The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan.
Mary Roach
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Hormones are nature's three bottles of beer.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach
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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 cancer research? It is always squandered. Let's squander some on Mars. Let's go out and play.
Mary Roach
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Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach
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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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Wisdom comes with age, but keep it to yourself.
Mary Roach
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Sexual desire is a state not unlike hunger.
Mary Roach
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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?
Mary Roach
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Softball is the reason Washing Machines and Bleach are so popular. Don't think so? Just ask a softball Mom.
Mary Roach
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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.
Mary Roach