Mark Kurlansky Quotes
I translated an Emile Zola book, 'The Belly of Paris,' because I didn't find an existing translation that captured his sense of humor. Humor is the first victim of translation.

Quotes to Explore
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We put more emphasis on who can drive a car than on who can be a parent. And I think there ought to be mandatory parenting classes starting in high school, and you should have to have a license to be able to be a parent to explain that you don't give alcohol to kids.
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If I want popularity, I go to a chef's convention.
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Even complex passwords are getting easy to break if they're too short. That's because today's inexpensive computer chips have the power of supercomputers from the year 2000.
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We have been given a role to play. We have been asked to provide, to give lectures on the role of Islamic development and the way we do it here, so the people who are Muslims there would understand what the role of Islam is.
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I have always lived an ordinary life, and always will. It's who and what has to do with my job that makes it 'unordinary.' I cook, go to the supermarket, pick my children up at school.
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I'm a dirt person. I trust the dirt. I don't trust diamonds and gold.
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Your belief system tends to be a function of how you were raised. Being raised in the Midwest and in a relatively conservative household, my views were shaped by my upbringing, by my Christian faith.
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I like junk food, French fries, hamburgers - I love it.
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Redheads were particularly persecuted during the European witch trials of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The colour was associated with the devil, and the pale skin which most redheads have was thought unnatural and deathly.
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I love men. They are intelligent and sensitive, but there's also that hard-edged arrogant side, which is just so attractive.
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Religion is the opium of the masses.
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But the Wisdom of God, which is His only-begotten Son, being in all respects incapable of change or alteration, and every good quality in Him being essential, and such as cannot be changed and converted, His glory is therefore declared to be pure and sincere.
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Smallpox was the worst disease in history. It killed more people than all the wars in history.
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I was familiar with 'Addicted' for a long time, even prior to the movie, way before it got the greenlight. And when it finally got the greenlight, I was very happy to be a part of it.
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As I watched bookstores close, I began to wonder how that felt for the owners. Owning a bookstore was their dream and now they're struggling and seeing those dreams fall apart.
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I still love physical product. I still hold out for actual CDs, because in radio, everyone just wants to send you a file to play.
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Fred Segal was founded - by none other than Fred Segal - as a tiny jeans retailer in 1968. In the 1970s Segal, began selling space to employees, starting with his nephew Ron Herman.
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I regard sports first and foremost as entertainment, so dry documentary narration is not for me.
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The major sweep of this book's living is too often marred by qualifying. It is hedged about with ifs and buts and if onlys and howevers, excuses for a life that is about to shut its covers for the last time and then crumple into dust in an unseen and never-to-be-remembered library.
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I do sing in the car. I actually sing Britney Spears songs in the car - me and a close friend of mine. She lives in West Palm and I live in Miami, and when we're going back and forth to see each other, we sing: 'Oh, Baby Baby.' We sing all these 1990s songs. We're like two 14-year-old kids just having a good time.
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In the nature of things, a person engaged in the flimsy business of expressing himself on paper is dependent on the large general privilege of being heard. Any intimation that this privilege may be revoked throws a writer into panic.
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I translated an Emile Zola book, 'The Belly of Paris,' because I didn't find an existing translation that captured his sense of humor. Humor is the first victim of translation.