Mark Kurlansky Quotes
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As a post-Holocaust kid, growing up in a neighborhood with a lot of Jewish refugees, I had got the idea there were no Jews left in Europe. But I found in my European wanderings that many of them had gone back and rebuilt their lives.
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I wrote a children's book because children have the most open minds. They are the people who really want to learn.
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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.
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Montserrat is a very pleasant place to do nothing. The islanders know this, and they know this is why tourists go there, but they are not totally comfortable with the notion.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm an urban person.
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I don't do much research on the Internet.
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People motivated by fear do not act well.
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Before Birdseye, hardly anybody ate frozen food because it was awful.
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What sets baseball apart from other sports is the array of skills that every player needs: the speed, the power, the agility.
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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.
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Paper is at the center of so many of the elements of the development of civilization.
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The impact of the Vietnam War on TV made everyone recognize the importance of visual media.
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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.
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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.
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Adults have pretty much made up their minds - they like you to the extent that you confirm what they already believe.
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It's true that writing and pastry-making are similar, but when you work as a pastry chef, you can get a kind of mania that everything you see is related to pastries.
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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.
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A water route to Chinese trade replacing the long, arduous Silk Road was a great dream of the Renaissance.
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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.
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Without the music to shout over, few people bothered saying anything.' (Remarking on a power cut while in a bar in the Dominican Republic)