225 Quotes by 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 be done.

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.

I have an increasingly strong feeling that all of us, myself included, too many times make too many statements and don't ask enough questions.

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.

Food is the best way to teach history and geography and most everything else.

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

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

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.

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