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In the course of my research, I've read a lot of incredibly bad books - mostly by academics. I'm puzzled as to just why their writing is so terrible. These are smart people, after all.
Mark Kurlansky -
I think that Judaism has been, throughout its history since A.D. 70, a diaspora culture that's all about being a minority. In fact, being a small minority. When I'm in Israel, I cannot get used to the notion that we're all Jewish. It doesn't seem to me that we're supposed to all be Jewish.
Mark Kurlansky
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I don't do much research on the Internet.
Mark Kurlansky -
I'm an urban person.
Mark Kurlansky -
Environmentalists aren't nearly sensitive enough to the fact that they are messing around with struggling people and their livelihoods. They forget that the fishermen are the people with the most immediate vested interest in having a healthy sea.
Mark Kurlansky -
I sometimes think there is nothing really to be said about a novel but 'read the book.' I have a jaundiced view of literary critics.
Mark Kurlansky -
Europeans are far more anti-war than Americans. They've had more wars, and they really just don't believe in it any more. But Americans do.
Mark Kurlansky -
Undeniably, Birdseye changed our civilization.
Mark Kurlansky
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Things that become important to economies become ritualized and become deified. Because I'm Jewish, I always thought it was interesting that in Judaism, salt seals a bargain, particularly the covenant with God. Some people, when they bless bread, they dip it in salt. Same thing exists in Islam.
Mark Kurlansky -
I wrote a children's book because children have the most open minds. They are the people who really want to learn.
Mark Kurlansky -
Before Birdseye, hardly anybody ate frozen food because it was awful.
Mark Kurlansky -
Paper is at the center of so many of the elements of the development of civilization.
Mark Kurlansky -
The impact of the Vietnam War on TV made everyone recognize the importance of visual media.
Mark Kurlansky -
Food is interesting to me because it's a way of understanding culture and societies and history. I would never write about food just as food. Just like I would never write about baseball just as baseball.
Mark Kurlansky
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I think I'm a bit like Ishmael in 'Moby Dick': a story teller and an observer in his own crisis.
Mark Kurlansky -
I grew up in a neighbourhood where there was a lot of fighting. It's what boys did during school, during recess, after school. And I was a fairly large kid. So everyone wanted to see if they could take me on.
Mark Kurlansky -
People motivated by fear do not act well.
Mark Kurlansky -
Let's face it: the 19th century really was the great age of the novel - Melville, Hawthorne, Tolstoy. These are the people I really admire.
Mark Kurlansky -
I always wanted to write a book about a common food that becomes a commercial commodity and therefore becomes economically important and therefore becomes politically important and culturally important. That whole process is very interesting to me. And salt seemed to me the best example of that, partly because it's universal.
Mark Kurlansky -
What sets baseball apart from other sports is the array of skills that every player needs: the speed, the power, the agility.
Mark Kurlansky
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The fact that, almost a century after refrigeration made salt-preserved foods irrelevant, we are still eating them demonstrates the affection we have for salt.
Mark Kurlansky -
Adults have pretty much made up their minds - they like you to the extent that you confirm what they already believe.
Mark Kurlansky -
'Cod' was a great story. It let me talk about the environment without putting people to sleep.
Mark Kurlansky -
Fishing in sustainable ways means fewer fish, higher quality, better price at the market. That is a formula that is good for the environment and the fisherman but bad for the consumer.
Mark Kurlansky