I've always been a bit of a space geek. I wrote an article years ago about the neutral buoyancy tank, which is this biblically sized pool where they train astronauts. And it was just the coolest thing.

— Mary Roach

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

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

— Mary Roach

Masters points out that the heterosexuals were at a disadvantage, as they do not benefit from what he called “gender empathy”. Doing unto your partner as you would do unto yourself only works well when you’re gay.

— Mary Roach

Meaning 'by way of the anus'. 'Per Annum', with two n's, means 'yearly'. The correct answer to the question, 'What is the birthrate per alum?' is zero (one hopes).

— Mary Roach

Most of us pass our lives never once laying eyes on our own organs, the most precious and amazing things we own. Until something goes wrong, we barely give them thought. This seems strange to me. How is it that we find Christina Aguilera more interesting than the inside of our own bodies?

— Mary Roach

My books are not really books; they're 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

No one goes out to play anymore. Simulation is becoming reality.

— Mary Roach

Not that there's anything wrong with just lying around on your back. In its way, rotting is interesting too, as we will see. It's just that there are other ways to spend your time as a cadaver.

— Mary Roach

One HIGHS member said that, yup, she could hear it, too. Then again, during a dinner conversation earlier in the trip, this same woman heard “Siegfried and Roy” as “Sigmund Freud.” The resulting image-Sigmund Freud with flowing hair and tigers and too many men’s makeup-haunts me to this day.

— Mary Roach