Mark Kurlansky

“Baseball players are not specialists; they all have to do it all. That is why I, and many aficionados, dislike the American League's practice of replacing the pitcher with a designated hitter. This creates two players who do not have to do it all.”

“Americans are so egocentric.”

“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.”

“There's a lot about the early history of salt that isn't known, including who first used it and when or how it was discovered that it preserved food. We were sort of handed, in history, this world where everyone knew about salt. And it's not clear exactly how that developed.”

“As a post-Holocaust kid, growing up in a neighborhood with a lot of Jewish refugees, I had got the idea there were no Jews left in Europe. But I found in my European wanderings that many of them had gone back and rebuilt their lives.”

“Havana, for all its smells, sweat, crumbling walls, isolation, and difficult history, is the most romantic city in the world.”

“History shows that any attempt by government to interfere in the consumption of salt is always extremely unpopular.”

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

“I am of that '60s generation, and for people of my age, that phrase 'change the world' has a real resonance.”