Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers Quotes

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

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.

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

There wasn't an anhydrous lacrimal gland in the room...

It is difficult to put words to the smell of decomposing human. It is dense and cloying, sweet but not flower-sweet. Halfway between rotting fruit and rotting meat.

compressed into boxes, packed in sawdust, ... trussed up in sacks, roped up like hams...

cadavers' intestines hanging like a parade streamers off the sides of tables, skulls bobbing in boiling pots, organs strewn on the floor being eaten by dogs.....