Mark Kurlansky

“The invention of gas and electric heaters has not meant the end of fireplaces. Printing did not end penmanship, television did not kill radio, movies did not kill theatre, and home videos did not kill movie theaters, although all these things were falsely predicted.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.'”

“When you're in theater, you inevitably wind up working in restaurants. I made pastry.”

“Even creative nonviolence can go unnoticed unless participants are attacked.”

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

“A modern revolutionary group, explained Abbie Hoffman, headed for the television station, not the factory.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Beware of fish that is very inexpensive.”

“One of humankind's most enduring misconceptions is that of nature's bounty... the belief that nature is such a powerful force that it is indestructible.”

“It is always easier to promote war than peace, easier to end the peace than end the war, because peace is fragile and war is durable.”

“Children need fairy tales, but it is just as essential that they have parents who tell them about their own lives, so that they can establish a relationship to the past.”

“I get up very early and write a lot.”

“Dominicans, Nicaraguans, and even the already highly skilled Cubans greatly improved their baseball skills when occupied by U.S. troops. The only acceptable resistance to a hated American presence was to try to beat them in baseball games.”

“The Negro League had some of the best players in history. Satchel Paige was probably one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball, and many believe catcher Josh Gibson was a better hitter than Babe Ruth.”

“Everyone always gets a little irritated by imitators, but mostly I'm flattered. What if you never did anything anyone wanted to copy?”

“Commercial fishing is always so behind the curve of technology that they were building ships with wooden hulls and masts in the 1940s, though it also had a diesel engine, which probably was used most of the time.”