Travel Documentarian Quotes

“I go anywhere I want, do whatever I want when I get there, they let me make self-indulgent TV about that experience, and give me about as much creative freedom as anyone's ever had in the history of television.”

“It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and whats happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there - with your eyes open - and lived to see it.”

“There is no Final Resting Place of the Mind.”

“Never try to get your kid to eat anything she doesn't already want to eat. Just eat interesting stuff in front of her while completely ignoring her. Never, ever suggest "try it." Never say those dreaded words "try it, it's good." Or worse, "It's good for you." That'll poison the well.”

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”

“There's always this assumption that you're going to get everything right immediately. And any professional understands that that's just not so.”

“I try to very hard to avoid a situation where I would be eating cat or dog; I've managed to gracefully avoid that. It's hypocritical of me and an arbitrary line, but one that I have managed to avoid crossing.”

“In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn't actually doing any writing.”

“Assume the worst. About everybody. But don't let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone you work with is a miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious and corrupt asshole shouldn't prevent you from enjoying their company, working with them or finding them entertaining.”

“I'm of a generation that romanticizes and maybe even over-romanticized things that were painful, that hurt others. I feel that. But I don't know if I have any regrets.”

“Free time is my enemy. I recognized early on I'm not a guy who should have a lot of time to contemplate the mysteries of the universe. I need to stay busy... That's just the nature of my demons.”

“It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that's enlightenment enough - to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”

“I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.”

“I like telling stories, and I tell stories that interest me. It would be boring to have to go to nothing but the best restaurants. That would be a misery to me.”

“When do you stop to de-douche?”

“I think there's a great storytelling tradition in the restaurant business that tends to attract people with an oral tradition of bulls - ting and bollocking. Creative people, people for whom the 9-to-5 world is not attractive or impossible. It seems that way. There are a lot of stories in the business, and a lot of characters - and it seems to attract its share of artists and writers and people who hope to do something creative in their lives.”

“Good food and good eating are about risk.”

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

“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 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.”

“Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom...is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go. -Anthony Bourdain”

“Recognise excellence. Celebrate weirdness and innovation. Oddballs should be cherished, if they can do something other people can't do.”

“To be treated well in places where you don't expect to be treated well, to find things in common with people you thought previously you had very, very little in common with, that can't be a bad thing.”

“I’ve been really fortunate in that I guess I was hired to do A Cook’s Tour, I was already a known quantity, meaning I had written a really obnoxious book and nobody expected me to be anyone that I wasn’t already.”

“I can't do exercises regularly because my schedule changes from day to day. I'm okay with hurting myself, like I'll lift something until it hurts, but I don't want to pass out or vomit in front of people.”