Mark Kurlansky Quotes

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Mark Kurlansky

Profession : Journalist

Birth : December 7, 1948

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.

Mark Kurlansky

I was a theatre major and started off as a playwright.

Mark Kurlansky

I don't do much research on the Internet.

Mark Kurlansky

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

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 have to go back to yourself - which is a little bit scary.

Mark Kurlansky

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

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 Americans do.

Mark Kurlansky

The inventors we remember didn't invent anything. They're the people who took somebody else's invention and made it commercially viable.

Mark Kurlansky

I started writing 'Cod' at a time when people were first beginning to take an interest in the problem of fisheries because the Grand Banks had closed.

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 about meat called 'Meathooked.'

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 wrote a children's book because children have the most open minds. They are the people who really want to learn.

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

Environmentalists aren't nearly sensitive enough to the fact that they are messing around with struggling people and their livelihoods. They forget that the fishermen are the people with the most immediate vested interest in having a healthy sea.

Mark Kurlansky

My most memorable job was on a lobster boat. I was a pretty strong kid, and they just needed someone who could haul pots on 200 ft. of line.

Mark Kurlansky

Before Birdseye, hardly anybody ate frozen food because it was awful.

Mark Kurlansky

What you seem to find when you get into this biography business is that people tend to have an image of themselves that they want to project, and they want to color statements by this image.

Mark Kurlansky

Americans are so egocentric.

Mark Kurlansky

I'm an urban person.

Mark Kurlansky

I have this whole section in my oyster book where I talk about how New Yorkers have gotten divorced from the sea and completely forget that they live by the sea, and I suggest that this happened when they lost their oysters.

Mark Kurlansky