Mary Roach
Mary Roach
Mary Roach is an American author, specializing in popular science and humor. As of 2016, she has published seven books,: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, and Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth20 March 1959
CityEtna, NH
CountryUnited States of America
I didn't really realize that writing... would be fun and people would pay you to do it. Being an astronaut is a glory profession, and so is writing, in a way.
I don't know of many people who've done sex research with an eye toward people saying sex is bad for you, except for the promiscuity and cervical cancer link - which is actually a valid discovery.
I'm always imposing my taste in books on others. I hope that people enjoy being surprised by a book they might not otherwise read - I enjoy the surprise myself when others do this to me.
There are fast chewers and slow chewers, long chewers and short chewers, right-chewing people and left-chewing people. Some of us chew straight up and down, and others chew side-to-side, like cows. Your oral processing habits are a physiological fingerprint.
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?'
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.
Literally thousands of e-mails over the course of a book go out to people I've never met, people who might end up being the focus of a chapter.
People don't appreciate their intestines until something goes wrong. But I always hope that people gain a little appreciation for their guts.
I talk to a lot of people who, when you try to sum them up in a couple of sentences, seem like they must be insane.
We can study it, we can apply principles of peer-reviewed research, we can do it.' People say, 'Yes, we can figure it out.'
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.
There are three kinds of people in this world: 1) People who make lists, 2) People who don't make lists, and 3) People who carve tiny Nativity scenes out of pecan hulls. I'm sorry, there isn't really a third category; it's just that a workable list needs a minimum of three items, I feel.
Dead people never seem to address the obvious - the things you'd think they'd be bursting to talk about, and the things all of us not-yet-dead are madly curious about. Such as: 'Hey, where are you now? What do you do all day? What's it feel like being dead? Can you see me? Even when I'm on the toilet? Would you cut that out?'
Eighty percent of flavor comes from your nose, including a set of internal nostrils. When you chew food and hold it in your mouth, the gases that are released goes into these nostrils. People who wolf their food are missing some of the flavor.