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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It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.
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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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The American people need to know the truth. The American people need to see the truth. In a democracy, letting the people know the truth is the essence of what it means to be free.
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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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I always save a huge book for a flight, because then you read it at both airports and on the plane and by the time you get home you're a quarter of the way through and it doesn't feel so unmanageable any more.
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I always feel sad when I come to the end of a book.
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But my body was telling its story. I have read a lot of stuff about cancer. I needed this book. I wish I'd had this book when I had cancer. I wanted someone to be talking to me about "fart floors." I wanted somebody telling me what it was like to have a colostomy bag. I felt so alone. And if you're a person who's been traumatized by past abuse, it's so potentially re-traumatizing. You slip right into "oh my god, this is the only person this has happened to before" mentality: "I'm especially bad and I have especially bad cancer..."
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Sometimes a miracle is a change in material conditions, such as physical healing. At other times, it is a psychological or emotional change.
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I don't think for a minute we went to Iraq for oil. It just so happened that it had oil. But I think we'll come out of the Iraqi situation with a call on their oil at market price.
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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.
