Mark Kurlansky Quotes

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Mark Kurlansky

Profession : Journalist

Birth : December 7, 1948

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 the religion.

Mark Kurlansky

Havana, for all its smells, sweat, crumbling walls, isolation, and difficult history, is the most romantic city in the world.

Mark Kurlansky

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

Mark Kurlansky

Cheap fish has usually been caught in careless ways.

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 that's not who Cubans are. In Cuba, you get a good story every day you go out walking. People are so funny.

Mark Kurlansky

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.

Mark Kurlansky

Paper is at the center of so many of the elements of the development of civilization.

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.

Mark Kurlansky

Undeniably, Birdseye changed our civilization.

Mark Kurlansky

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

Mark Kurlansky

Chroniclers of the role of paper in history are given to extravagant pronouncements: Architecture would not have been possible without paper. Without paper, there would have been no Renaissance. If there had been no paper, the Industrial Revolution would not have been possible. None of these statements is true.

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 school. And I was a fairly large kid. So everyone wanted to see if they could take me on.

Mark Kurlansky

The impact of the Vietnam War on TV made everyone recognize the importance of visual media.

Mark Kurlansky

Beware of fish that is very inexpensive.

Mark Kurlansky

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.

Mark Kurlansky

A water route to Chinese trade replacing the long, arduous Silk Road was a great dream of the Renaissance.

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 humor. Humor is the first victim of translation.

Mark Kurlansky

When I was a kid, we had this great advantage of there being no YA books. You read kid books and then went on to adult books. When I was 12 or 13, I read all of Steinbeck and Hemingway. I thought I should read everything a writer writes.

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 shouldn't do to a good author, but I've been reading really fast ever since.

Mark Kurlansky

I read pretty well in French and Spanish. I don't want to read a book written in French or Spanish in translation.

Mark Kurlansky