Mark Kurlansky Quotations

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.