Anthony Bourdain Quotes

“Trying to micromanage the perfect vacation is always a disaster. That leads to terrible times. If you get lost and you just end up eating just anywhere, you know, you see a bunch of Venetians sitting around smoking cigarettes, eating something unrecognizable in a dark alley somewhere, chances are it's interesting.”

“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.”

“Chefs are fond of hyperbole, so they can certainly talk that way. But on the whole, I think they probably have a more open mind than most people.”

“I have the best job in the world.”

“I think as a moral question, restaurant workers should get paid more.”

“I think that if all kids aspire to reach a point where they could feed themselves and a few of their friends, this would be good for the world surely.”

“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.”

“[George] Orwell's essays. It's got it all. Great writing, a worldview that I find interesting and useful, and most of it timelessly true.”

“The way you make an omelet reveals your character.”

“Having been a chef for some many years, I understand what it's like to work really, really hard to get good at something, only to have someone piss all over it.”

“Where once they used to say, 'Cocaine is God's way of saying you have too much money' - now, maybe EDM is. Come ye lords and princelings of douchedom.”

“I am a delightfully evangelical guy about things I love. I am that annoying guy who sits everyone down and forces them to read some book I like. I'm looking across the full spectrum of genres.”

“We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.”

“Let's at least acknowledge who is working in America right now and what our needs are, as well as the moral question of somebody who's been here 20 years, paying taxes to which they probably do not receive a refund, and not committing any crimes, working hard, and supporting an industry. Shouldn't there be some middle ground here? Shouldn't there be a way for them to be welcome in this country?”

“I'm certainly dismayed by what I'm seeing now. There's a lot of ugliness of a kind I've never seen in my lifetime, or heard in my lifetime. But, look, I'm a romantic. I'm hopeful.”

“If I'm training I'm cutting weight for a competition. I'm hard. I'm pretty much eating animal protein and that's it. No rice, no beans, certainly no sweets.”

“If you're training in a combat sport, deliciousness takes a backseat.”

“I'm in no position to try to tell people how to live their family life.”

“I'm not looking to freak people out - eating rodents or bugs. I don't do that anymore.”

“PETA doesn't want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle-deep in their own crap, because they don't want any animals to die ever and basically think chickens should, in time, gain the right to vote. I don't want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them probably less delicious.”

“I admire people who do things that are interesting to them, who don't have a strategy or a master plan or have a brand - I don't care about any of those things.”

“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 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.”

“Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who'd just as soon cut each other's throats in their off hours moving in unison with grace and ease can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion.”

“The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, 'I'm not interested,' or you're unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don't understand that, and I think it's rude. You're at Grandma's house, you eat what Grandma serves you.”