Quotes from Eleanor Clark

Obviously, if you don't love life, you can't enjoy an oyster.

You are eating the sea, that's it, only the sensation of a gulp of sea water has been wafted out of it by some sorcery, and you are on the verge of remembering you don't know what, mermaids or the sudden smell of kelp on the ebb tide or a poem you read once, something connected with the flavor of life itself...

Even the stupidest cat seems to know more than any dog.

Obviously, if you don't love life, you can't enjoy an oyster.

This last, like most lamellibranchs or ruffle breathers but no other oyster,

has its rectum running through its heart; this is considered rather unsophisticated.

garum was invented by the Greeks, according to Pliny,

is probably as good a single explanation as any for the fall of both Greece and Rome.

It is like a party all the time; nobody has to worry about giving one or being invited; it is going on every day in the street and you can go down or be part of it from your window.

Rome is ... an impossible compounding of time, in which no century has respect for any other and all hit you in a jumble at every turn.