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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
Book
Particles
Well
Practically
Writing
Chemistry
Even
Failed
Would
Physics
Think
Areas
Planetary
Thinking
Write
Particle
Wells
Geology

More quotes by 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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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.
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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In 'Packing for Mars,' I tried to convey the importance of getting young people interested in science.
Mary Roach
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Sexual desire is a state not unlike hunger.
Mary Roach
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In my whole life, I've never vomited from seeing something disgusting. Does it really even happen, outside of movies and TV? I believe it may be a myth.
Mary Roach
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For the scientists, they're kind of puzzled and pleased that somebody finds their work interesting. It makes it fun for me. I feel like I've sort of turned over a stone that hasn't been turned over.
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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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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Wisdom comes with age, but keep it to yourself.
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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In the words of the late Francis Crick...You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. (13)
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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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.
Mary Roach
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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.)
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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My books are not really books theyre 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.
Mary Roach
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I dont fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.
Mary Roach