There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque…

“A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered…

— Mark Kurlansky

“The Romans, Jones pointed out, called a man in love salax, in a salted state, which is the origin of the word salacious.”

— Mark Kurlansky

When you're in theater, you inevitably wind up working in restaurants. I made pastry.

— Mark Kurlansky

“For a time, the Hanseatics were well appreciated as honorable merchants who ensured quality and fought against unscrupulous practices. They were known as Easterlings…

— Mark Kurlansky

I blurbed a nice book, not at all like my book 'The Big Oyster,' called 'The Essential Oyster.' I blurbed a pretty good book…

— Mark Kurlansky

The entire trendy foodie world - food writing, food television, celebrated restaurants - is all about food for the rich. But the most important…

— Mark Kurlansky

One of the truly horrible things about the Holocaust is that it doesn't end in 1945. It keeps affecting our lives in the way…

— Mark Kurlansky

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…

— 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…

— Mark Kurlansky

THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted.

— Mark Kurlansky

Religion is a big problem in Israel and the Arab world, but again, the problem isn't religion but political leaders who want to use…

— Mark Kurlansky

“It is a peculiarity of the English language that while most fish swim in schools, herring swim in shoals, a word of the same…

— Mark Kurlansky

“The painstakingly extracted purple dye was a luxury item of such prestige that the color purple became a way of showing wealth and power.”

— Mark Kurlansky

Don't forget the Vietnam War was brought to us by Democrats.

— Mark Kurlansky

So much of what I write in fiction is based on true stories.

— Mark Kurlansky