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Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Mary Roach Quotes

Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. ‘Stiff’ was an oddball book – I mean, a funny book about cadavers? – and I worried that it would be too unconventional. In the end, that’s what has made it a success, I think.

– Mary Roach

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.

– Mary Roach

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.

– Mary Roach

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.

– Mary Roach

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.

– Mary Roach

I used to do my best thinking while staring out airplane windows. The seat-back video system put a stop to that. Now I sit and watch old’ Friends’ and ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ episodes. Walking is good, but here again, technology has interfered. I like to listen to iTunes while I walk home. I guess I don’t think anymore.

– Mary Roach

When I was 16, I had a job on the cleaning crew at a local hospital. I wore a pink uniform and cleaned bathrooms and buffed the hallway linoleum. Oddly, I don’t recall hating the job. I recall getting choked up at the end of the summer when I went to turn in my uniform and say goodbye to the ladies.

– Mary Roach

The broader the topic, the easier it is, not only to fill a book, but to set the bar pretty high for really great stuff.

– Mary Roach

Most of the people who are engaged in the subjects that I look into are pretty interesting. Whether its sex researchers or someone who’s devoted their career to saliva or somebody who does research with cadavers, there’s an inherent fascination in the subject matter of their work.

– Mary Roach

It is interesting to come across people who feel that a ghost communicating via a spell-checker is less far-fetched than a software glitch.

– Mary Roach

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.

– Mary Roach

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

Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that’s what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample.

– Mary Roach

I have not eaten a lot of insects. I ate a termite in Africa, but it was on a bet. It was a soldier termite. It was alive, and I don’t really recommend the live soldier termite as something you want to start with if you’re going to start exploring eating insects.

– Mary Roach

I think that the women’s magazines and a lot of those quick tips for better sex, I think that they do people a disservice, sometimes, because they become very focused on – they’re thinking, ‘Okay, I read that I should do this, and am I doing it right?’

– Mary Roach

Astronauts are like these mythic legends, but really, they are just regular people, people who wear chinos.

– Mary Roach

I had a bike accident a few years ago, and I went to the emergency room, and I had to have a gash sewn up. And I am the kind of person that I was sitting up fascinated, watching, to the extent that the doctor said, ‘Do you want to do a couple of stitches? You seem to be very interested.’

– Mary Roach

I don’t write on topics that require a lot of urgency. But in ‘Stiff,’ I wanted to change people’s hearts about organ donation. Whenever I get a chance, I try to talk about that.

– Mary Roach

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