Mark Kurlansky

People are always asking me what my favorite food is. I say, 'Food that tells me where I am.'

— Mark Kurlansky

“And so you have more opportunities and more responsibilities than any other generation in history.”

— Mark Kurlansky

A Wedding In Haiti is a great experience and its unaffected prose is as true a portrait of complex Haiti as you…

— Mark Kurlansky

If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod... But it has among its predators - man,…

— 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…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Fishing has always been at the heart of the culture of nations with coastlines.”

— Mark Kurlansky

It's harder to kill off fish than mammals. But after 1,000 years of hunting the Atlantic cod, we know that it can…

— 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

“In the first century A.D., Pliny estimated that the average Roman citizen consumed only 25 grams of salt a day. The modern…

— 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…

— Mark Kurlansky

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

— Mark Kurlansky

“Europe needed printing because it was bursting with creativity. New ideas in the arts and sciences, as well as in social justice…

— Mark Kurlansky

People in America think of it as a sad and downtrodden place, and I guess it could be, but it's not because…

— Mark Kurlansky

The Negro League had some of the best players in history. Satchel Paige was probably one of the best pitchers in the…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Anthimus’s pronouncement on garum has echoed through Western cooking: “Nam liquamen ex omni parte prohibemus,” We ban the use of garum from…

— Mark Kurlansky

When I was a kid, we had this great advantage of there being no YA books. You read kid books and then…

— Mark Kurlansky

“The nature of the precious liquid from which purple came would not be entirely understood for another two millennia. In 1826, a…

— 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

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

— Mark Kurlansky

A gourmet knows that the best part is not always the expensive part, and he will find that part, and then he…

— Mark Kurlansky

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

— Mark Kurlansky

I'd done occasional short stories, but I don't like publishing them in literary magazines; they treat you too much like college boys.

— Mark Kurlansky

Everyone always gets a little irritated by imitators, but mostly I'm flattered. What if you never did anything anyone wanted to copy?

— Mark Kurlansky

I sometimes think there is nothing really to be said about a novel but 'read the book.' I have a jaundiced view…

— Mark Kurlansky

“One of humankind's most enduring misconceptions is that of nature's bounty... the belief that nature is such a powerful force that it…

— Mark Kurlansky

“In 1928, Celulosa Cubana, S.A., founded by sugar tycoon Manuel Rionda, began making bagasse paper in Tuinucu, Cuba.”

— Mark Kurlansky

As with wine, geography affects the flavor. Oysters are usually named for a locale.

— Mark Kurlansky

One of the things I am most proud of is refusing to serve in the military when drafted during the Vietnam War.

— Mark Kurlansky

I think we are drawn to anti-heroes because that is what most of us are most of the time and it is…

— 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…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Under English law the penalty for eating meat on Friday was hanging. The law remained on the books until the sixteenth century,…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Nevertheless, Rouen merchants who sold craspoix to the English paid high tariffs at London Bridge, which suggests this salted whale blubber was…

— Mark Kurlansky

When Ozzie Virgil became the first Dominican player in the majors, his nationality was barely noticed. What the press and fans talked…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Massachusetts, like Queen Elizabeth, encouraged salt making through the granting of monopolies to those who showed the skill to produce salt cheaply.…

— Mark Kurlansky

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world…

— Mark Kurlansky

Chloride is essential for digestion and in respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, the body would be unable to transport…

— Mark Kurlansky

I have written a considerable amount - both fiction and nonfiction - about the Caribbean. My love for this part of the…

— Mark Kurlansky

“The main body of Vikings were given lands in the Seine basin in exchange for protecting Paris. They settled into northern France…

— Mark Kurlansky

Baseball players are not specialists; they all have to do it all. That is why I, and many aficionados, dislike the American…

— 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…

— Mark Kurlansky