Mary Roach

“With the rise of classical Greece, the soul debate evolved into the more familiar heart-versus-brain, the liver having been demoted to an accessory role. We are fortunate that this is so, for we would otherwise have been faced with Celine Dion singing "My Liver Belongs to You" and movie houses playing The Liver Is a Lonely Hunter. Every Spanish love song that contains the word corazon, which is all of them, would contain the somewhat less lilting higado, and bumper stickers would proclaim, "I [liver symbol] my Pekingese.”

“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.”

“I spend a lot of my time on the phone, pestering people. 'What's new in your lab? Can I come visit your lab? When can I come visit your lab?' I'm basically a professional pesterer.”

“Meteorite hunting is not for wimps. The best places to look are also the coldest and windiest. You need very old ice, and you need wind, lots of it, strong and unrelenting. Antarctica fits the bill.”

“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.”

“People don't appreciate their intestines until something goes wrong. But I always hope that people gain a little appreciation for their guts.”

“Though it's harder to justify the use of a cadaver for practicing nose jobs than it is for practicing coronary bypasses, it is justifiable nonetheless. Cosmetic surgery exists, for better or for worse, and it's important, for the sake of those who undergo it, that the surgeons who do it are able to do it well.”

“I write with a sense of my future readers being ever on the verge of setting down the book and pronouncing it a bore. Fear and insecurity are great motivators.”

“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.”

“Will I switch to E-reading? I won't, mainly because I love the look and feel of books - particularly hardbacks. I love them enough to put up with the minor hassles of lugging them around and maneuvering them in my lap and having to set them aside while I eat my cheeseburger.”

“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.”

“Weightlessness was unbelievable. It's physical euphoria: Nothing about you has any weight. You don't realize that you are weighed down all the time by yourself, and your organs, and your head. Your arms weigh down your shoulders. In space simulation, you get to fly like Superman! You're hanging in the air! It's the coolest thing.”

“The Internet is a boon for hypochondriacs like me.”

“To me, NASA is kind of the magical kingdom. I was sort of a geek, and you go there, and there are just these wondrously strange things and people.”

“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.”

“I'm a science goober.”

“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.)”

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

“Gravitation is the lust of the cosmos.”

“Viagra isn't the only drug being prescribed off-label for women with arousal problems. Los Angeles urologist Jennifer Berman told me some doctors are prescribing low doses of Ritalin. Drugs like Ritalin improve a person's focus, so it stands to reason that it would make it easier to stay attuned to subtle changes taking place in one's body. 'It enables a woman to focus o the task at hand,' said Berman, managing, though surely not intending, to make sex sound like homework.”