Mark Kurlansky

I always wanted an extraordinary life. When it's over, I want to be able to say that I did it.

I'm friends with Studs Terkel.

I'm usually writing about survival. I never planned it, but it runs through all my books.

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.

Working in a sugar mill is absolute misery for very little money.

There comes a time in every writer's life when it becomes necessary to recognize what people really care about.

For some reason, some kids have a fear of food. Some adults do, too. The best cure for that is to try a lot of different kinds of things. The more you try, the more experiences you have.

Undeniably, Birdseye changed our civilization.

By modernizing the process of food preservation, Birdseye nationalized and then internationalized food distribution... facilitated urban living and helped to take people away from the farms... and greatly contributed to the development of industrial-scale agriculture.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Beware of fish that is very inexpensive.

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.

Food is interesting to me because it's a way of understanding culture and societies and history. I would never write about food just as food. Just like I would never write about baseball just as baseball.

I love seeing what people are eating. It's a great way of looking at what is similar and what is different about people. It's sociology and anthropology and history rolled into one.

Cheap fish has usually been caught in careless ways.