Anthony Bourdain Quotes

I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.

If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food, it's a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.

I've been very careful about what I say yes to and what I say no to. And I think seriously always about... this may be a good idea right now or it may be a lot of money right now, but will it be good for me five years from now? Will it be fun? Will it make me hate myself? I think about all of those things.

I am in no way supportive of hunting for trophies or sport - would never do it and don't like it that others do. But if you kill it, then eat it, it's fine.

I eat strategically. If I know I'm having a big Chinese banquet tomorrow, I'm not eating a big dinner tonight, and I'm not having breakfast.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

You dropped a 500-seat deuce on Times Square.

I think fine dining is dying out everywhere... but I think there will be - and there has to always be - room for at least a small number of really fine, old-school fine-dining restaurants.

I'd like to play bass like Bootsy Collins. I'm serious. That would be my dream.

I’m always secretly the most pleased when a show just really, really looks good and when my camera guys are really happy with the images they got.

I wouldn't want to compare myself to David Byrne whom I consider a genius, but what I think what we have in common is that he's also a guy who is very interested in the world and who has a lot of passions beyond singing and playing guitar.

The mishandling of food and equipment with panache was always admired; to some extent, this remains true to this day. Butchers still slap down prime cuts with just a little more force and noise than necessary. Line cooks can't help putting a little English on outgoing plates, spinning them into the pass-through with reverse motion so they curl back just short of the edge. Oven doors in most kitchens have to be constantly tightened because of repeatedly being kicked closed by clog-shod feet. And all of us dearly love to play with knives.

I couldn't imagine a more unreliable, more unprofitable way to make a living than writing. My advice? Show up, do the best you can. Keep your day job. If you get a lucky break, don't f*** up. It was helpful to be older because I had made all the really stupid mistakes already.

I would frankly be shocked if Donald Trump even knows how to use chopsticks or is even able to manipulate them with those tiny little fingers.

[When I die], I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.

Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.

If people are eating mostly pickles after many generations, where did that come from? It's reflective of history, often a painful history. It's central to a culture, to a history, to a personal story. It's communication at its most fundamental.

Naturally, I'm misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably.

I'd learned something... Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me... and others. This was valuable information.

I'm not impressed by any cooks who can brag about a filet mignon. A guy who can take the neck of a shank or can use tripe to make into something delicious is really interesting to me; that's impressive.

America's most dangerous export was, is and always will be our fast-food outlets.

Italy is hard to beat. It's a family-friendly experience, they like to see kids in restaurants, and at dinner you see all the adults at the table and all the kids at the other end of the table. Maybe they run off and go play.

I managed to reach a depth of self-loathing that usually takes a night of drinking to achieve.

I'm definitely looking forward to the day when I stop working - if I ever stop working. I like the idea of keeling over in my tomato vines in Sardinia or northern Italy.

I'm really happy to see the explosion of interest in Korean food, and this hybrid Korean-American food.

They're professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don't forget that the Russians - any Russian - can drink you under the table.

Being on television, being recognizable, this is unnatural.

My tastes in what I eat at home would be very familiar to most people who cook for families. I just organize those things a little bit differently.

If you've ever hauled a 28-pound two-year-old around New York, you'll find that men fold at the knees a lot quicker than women.

I'm a guy who should not have a lot of free time. But when it comes to vacation, I like to pull the plug completely. It's all about my daughter - I'm no longer the star of my own movie.

One of the things is challenging yourself to do a Rome show when everybody's done a Rome show. To find some aspect of food culture or chef culture that people can look at in a new way.

Cooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar.

There is no other place on earth even remotely like New Orleans. Don't even try to compare it to anywhere else.

There are chefs who are spectacular technicians, and often their food is worth eating once or twice, but if there's no heart in it, if there's no personality in it, it's not something you want to go back for. But heart without any skill at all? All the heart in the world ain't gonna help you if you can't peel an onion, or if you don't understand how to apply heat properly. A well-done steak is a well-done steak.

I’m a Twitter addict. Jose Andres is a serial tweeter. It’s funny to see which chefs have embraced it, and the different paths they take.

You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.

At the end of a dinner at my house, my kitchen sink is filled with dishes and there's nothing pretty about the garbage.

New Orleans is a glorious mutation

Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime...Please, treat your garlic with respect...Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.

Cooking breakfast and brunch professionally really kind of ruined breakfast service for me for a long time.

The cooking profession, while it's a noble craft and a noble calling, 'cause you're doing something useful - you're feeding people, you're nurturing them, you're providing sustenance - it was never pure.

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.

I'm really good at sleeping on planes. I mean, I smell jet fuel and I'm out; I'm asleep for takeoff.

I do not have a merchandise line. I don't sell knives or apparel. Though I have been approached to endorse various products from liquor to airlines to automobiles to pharmaceuticals dozens of times, I have managed to resist the temptation.

My family is very far from normal.

Jiro Ono serves Edo-style traditional sushi, the same 20 or 30 pieces he's been making his whole life, and he's still unsatisfied with the quality and every day wakes up and trains to make the best. And that is as close to a religious experience in food as one is likely to get.

I travel 250 days a year. There are chef friends who I only see every couple of years. By conventional standards I'm a bad friend. I'm not there to remember your birthday or to offer you words of support through Twitter. I'm not up on what you're doing in New York because I'm not in New York. I'm not what people call in parenting circles "present."

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.