Mark Kurlansky Quotations

With cultivation, the New York oyster industry thought it had beaten nature. But the city still didn't take care of its water. London, where oysters once came from the Thames, has a similar story.

Fast freezing had at last made the unsalted fish people wanted available to everyone, even far inland. Soon fishing vessels, instead of salting their catch at sea, were freezing it on board. Most salted foods became delicacies instead of necessities.

Examining the oyster is an accessible way to take on the issue of urban development. Even though I'm from New England, I never wanted to eat cod that much. Oysters are much better.

I hope Bush, with his interest in history, will realize that, in time, the fights over oil will look equally foolish. Government has the ability to foster research and develop existing technology to move the world away from oil.

In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.

The history of the Americas is one of constant warfare over salt,

THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted.

Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man's relationship with nature, about the climate, about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies, alliances, wars, religion. It is about memory and tradition and, at times, even about sex.

modern people have seen too many chemicals and are ready to go back to eating dirt.

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. Clarence Birdseye

A true gourmet - a judge - has the wisdom to know when to stop eating.

Whenever I was called a gourmet, I suspected I was being accused of something at least slightly unpleasant. But that was before I heard the term "foodie." I am still not sure that a gourmet is a good thing to be, but it must be better than a foodie.

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

In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping and murder, the Socialist government was still vulnerable to the accusation of being "soft on Basques.

Fate likes to tease paranoids.'

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

There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government, the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only nine months later in carnage the scale of which had never before been seen on earth.

In 'The Republic' he [Plato] states that the enjoyment of food is not a true pleasure because the purpose of eating is to relieve pain - hunger.

If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod... But it has among its predators - man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.

Chloride is essential for digestion and in respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, the body would be unable to transport nutrients or oxygen, transmit nerve impulses, or move muscles, including the heart.

A superpower that no longer stands for anything, that no one believes in anymore, that is seen only as a bully, will fall despite its military might. If the Bush administration ever wanted to reflect on history, it might think about this.

Judging foods without regard to price is a rich mans game, and yet poor people can be gourmets able to discern a good potato from a bad one.

In nineteenth-century Russia, sauerkraut was valued more than caviar,

A gourmet knows that the best part is not always the expensive part, and he will find that part, and then he will share it. A gourmet should want to share.

The egg creams of Avenue A in New York and the root beer float....are among the high points of American gastronomic inventiveness.

Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the single most significant trademarks of a culture.

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.