On the plane, I like to read fiction set in the location I'm going to. Fiction is in many ways more useful than a guidebook, because it gives you those little details, a sense of the way a place smells, an emotional sense of the place. So, I'll bring Graham Greene's The Quiet American if I'm going to Vietnam. It's good to feel romantic about a destination before you arrive.
Anthony BourdainYou realize after you travel enough that there's some things that, no matter how good you are at making television, no matter how good your cameras are, how well it's edited, there's no way the lenses could have captured the moment, and there's no way you will ever be able to write about it and do it justice.
Anthony BourdainI lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.
Anthony BourdainPeople are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice... they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.
Anthony BourdainThese pharmaceutical company executives are dope dealers and they should be treated worse, and more roughly than dope dealers. When you're talking about millionaire and billionaire executives at pharmaceutical companies, these are people with something to lose if threatened with jail. Frog-march them out of their door in suburbia, handcuffed and surrounded by DEA officers, with their children and neighbours watching.
Anthony Bourdain