Mary Roach Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Slime, Birth, Forget

  51 Copy quote

• 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

  Beach, Pain, Loneliness

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Ignorance, Cutting, Views

  Mary Roach (2010). “Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife”, p.16, Canongate Books

  26 Copy quote

• It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more then half of the people in the position H's family was in will say no, will choose to burn those organs or let them rot. We abide the surgeon's scalpel to save our own lives, out loved ones' lives, but not to save a stranger's life. H has no heart, but heartless is the last thing you'd call her.

  Mary Roach

  Heart, People, Waiting

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Cadavers, Weight, Today

  Mary Roach (2012). “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”, p.14, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

• The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.

  Mary Roach

  Lying, Brain, Cadavers

  "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers". Book by Mary Roach, 2003.

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mary Roach

  Funeral, Ordinary, Cadavers

  Mary Roach (2004). “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”, p.82, W. W. Norton & Company

  14 Copy quote

• You are a person and then you cease to be a person, and a cadaver takes your place.

  Mary Roach

  Cadavers, Persons, Cease

  Mary Roach (2004). “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”, p.12, W. W. Norton & Company

  58 Copy quote

• I began thinking about my skeleton, this solid, beautiful thing inside me that I would never see.

  Mary Roach

  Beautiful, Thinking, Skeletons

  10 Copy quote

• Here is the secret to surviving one of these [airplane] crashes: Be male. In a 1970 Civil Aeromedical institute study of three crashes involving emergency evacuations, the most prominent factor influencing survival was gender (followed closely by proximity to exit). Adult males were by far the most likely to get out alive. Why? Presumably because they pushed everyone else out of the way.

  Mary Roach

  Airplane, Secret, Survival

  Mary Roach (2004). “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”, p.125, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to.

  Mary Roach

  Bars, Roaches, Spirit

  Mary Roach (2010). “Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife”, p.159, Canongate Books

  8 Copy quote

• I walk up and down the rows. The heads look like rubber halloween masks. They also look like human heads, but my brain has no precedent for human heads on tables or in roasting pans or anywhere other than on top of a human bodies, and so I think it has chosen to interpret the sight in a more comforting manner. - Here we are at the rubber mask factory. Look at the nice men and woman working on the masks.

  Mary Roach

  Nice, Halloween, Men

  7 Copy quote

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

  Mary Roach

  Book, People, Disrespectful

  Mary Roach (2004). “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”, p.11, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• Death. It doesn't have to be boring.

  Mary Roach

  Death, Boring

  4 Copy quote

• People are vomiting unrealistically in movies, and something must be done about it.

  Mary Roach

  People, Done, Vomiting

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Hormones are nature's three bottles of beer.

  Mary Roach

  Beer, Three, Bottles

  4 Copy quote

• I very much was inspired by Bill Bryson. He does cover science, but more often, it's a mixture of science and travel, and whatever he happens to be writing about - Shakespeare, Australia, the United Kingdom, or when he covers science in 'A Short History Of Nearly Everything' - he has an incredible ability to be both entertaining and enlightening.

  Mary Roach

  Writing, Australia, Doe

  "Spook and Stiff author Mary Roach". Interview with Donna Bowman, www.avclub.com. August 27, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Long, Fluid, Disgusting

  "Why “Asshole” Is High Praise - and Other Anatomy Lessons With Mary Roach". Interview with Sarah Zhang, www.motherjones.com. April 2, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mary Roach

  Titles, Pages, Path

  Mary Roach (2004). “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”, p.54, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• The suffix 'naut' comes from the Greek and Latin words for ships and sailing. Astronaut suggests 'a sailor in space.' Chimponaut suggests 'a chimpanzee in sailor pants'.

  Mary Roach

  Latin, Space, Sailing

  Mary Roach (2011). “Packing for Mars”, p.198, Oneworld Publications

  7 Copy quote

• The terms "idiot" and "lunatic" were acceptable diagnostic terms in England up until 1959. "Imbecile" and "feeble-minded person" were, likewise, listed as official categories in the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. England has always lagged a bit behind in discarding outdated terms for the disadvantaged. When I was there in 1980, it was still possible to shop for used clothing at the local Spastic Shop. That is, compared to the United States, where it takes, oh, about twenty-five minutes for a diagnostic euphemism to become a conversational faux pas.

  Mary Roach

  Imbeciles, England, Twenties

  Mary Roach (2010). “Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife”, p.56, Canongate Books

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Eye, Airports, People

  59 Copy quote

• 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

  Heart, Writing, People

  4 Copy quote

• Space doesn't just encompass the sublime and the ridiculous. It erases the line between.

  Mary Roach

  Space, Sublime, Lines

  Mary Roach (2011). “Packing for Mars”, p.11, Oneworld Publications

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Sex, Home, Years

  Mary Roach (2009). “Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex”, p.192, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

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