Mark Kurlansky

I love seeing what people are eating. It's a great way of looking at what is similar and what is different about…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Venice manipulated markets by controlling production. In the late thirteenth century, wishing to raise the world market price, Venice had all saltworks…

— Mark Kurlansky

Montserrat is a very pleasant place to do nothing. The islanders know this, and they know this is why tourists go there,…

— Mark Kurlansky

The Pilgrims were unified by their religious zeal, but they couldn't fish, they didn't know how to hunt, and they were bad…

— Mark Kurlansky

There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government, the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only…

— Mark Kurlansky

There's a lot about the early history of salt that isn't known, including who first used it and when or how it…

— Mark Kurlansky

I have this whole section in my oyster book where I talk about how New Yorkers have gotten divorced from the sea…

— Mark Kurlansky

As a post-Holocaust kid, growing up in a neighborhood with a lot of Jewish refugees, I had got the idea there were…

— Mark Kurlansky

By modernizing the process of food preservation, Birdseye nationalized and then internationalized food distribution... facilitated urban living and helped to take people…

— Mark Kurlansky

I would like to know what politicians eat on the campaign trail, what Picasso ate in his pink period, what Walt Whitman…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Herzl had said that attracting the Jewish diaspora would be a slow process, but after a half century as a nation, according…

— Mark Kurlansky

“The parallels between preserving food and preserving mummies were apparently not lost on posterity. In the nineteenth century, when mummies from Saqqara…

— Mark Kurlansky

What people eat is not well documented. Food writers prefer to focus on fashionable, expensive restaurants whose creative dishes reflect little of…

— Mark Kurlansky

In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and…

— Mark Kurlansky

People have a lot of strange relationships with food. There's a lot more going on there than just, 'Oh, these crullers remind…

— 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…

— Mark Kurlansky

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

— Mark Kurlansky

Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Now, at peace, Jordan has few resources but is full of plans. Mohammed Noufal observed with a smile, “All we need is…

— Mark Kurlansky

“When these early settlers hunted, they would leave red herring along their trail because the strong smell would confuse wolves, which is…

— Mark Kurlansky

“The Roman historian Plutarch estimated that the civilized Romans under Julius Caesar, in his decade-long campaign in Gaul, destroyed 800 towns and…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Davy’s work in Bristol came under attack by conservative politicians, including the famous Irish MP Edmund Burke, who accused the gas experiments…

— Mark Kurlansky

How you solve your problems are quite different. In non-fiction, you can always go back to the research, whereas in fiction, you…

— Mark Kurlansky

“Were it not for their aversion to pigs, the Egyptians would probably have invented ham, for they salt-cured meat and knew how…

— Mark Kurlansky

Before refrigeration, most food was heavily salted. Many of these salted foods have persisted, such as sauerkraut, pickles, cured anchovies, cheese, salted…

— Mark Kurlansky

“The Egyptians of 4000 B.C. believed that the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, taught them how to grow olives. The Greeks have…

— Mark Kurlansky

You read about these oyster-shucking contests: Somebody did 100 oysters in three minutes, three seconds. I'm lucky if I can open one…

— Mark Kurlansky

When I was 13 or 14, I took this speed-reading course. A lot of the things you do in speed reading you…

— Mark Kurlansky

I translated an Emile Zola book, 'The Belly of Paris,' because I didn't find an existing translation that captured his sense of…

— Mark Kurlansky

“According to Seneca, Apicius committed suicide because, having spent one tenth of a considerable fortune on his kitchen, he realized that he…

— Mark Kurlansky

Things that become important to economies become ritualized and become deified. Because I'm Jewish, I always thought it was interesting that in…

— Mark Kurlansky

What you seem to find when you get into this biography business is that people tend to have an image of themselves…

— Mark Kurlansky

In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping and murder, the Socialist government was still vulnerable to…

— Mark Kurlansky