Anthony Bourdain Quotes

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you.”

“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. Walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food. It's a plus for everybody.”

“I learned a long time ago that trying to micromanage the perfect vacation is always a disaster. That leads to terrible times.”

“I'm a big believer in winging it. I'm a big believer that you're never going to find the perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one.”

“I travel around the world, eat a lot of s—, and basically do whatever the f— I want.”

“Your body is not a temple. It's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”

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

“It's very rarely a good career move to have a conscience.”

“Luck is not a business model.”

“Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me.”

“Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it's a start.”

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

“I jokingly say that I learned every important lesson, all the most important lessons of my life as a dishwasher. And in some ways, that's true.”

“It made me hopeful and made me feel better about the human species. We like to be good, we aspire to do good things, and we're generally trudging through life trying to do the best we can.”

“There's a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed and smoke weed all day and watch cartoons and old movies. I could easily do that. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid and outwit that guy.”

“Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It's about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals. It's about danger.”

“What is it that normal people do? What makes a normal happy family? How do they behave? What do they eat at home? How do they live their lives? I had little clue how to answer these questions for most of my working life as I'd been living it on the margins.”

“I think it's the most undervalued, underappreciated world cuisine with tremendous, tremendous potential. This is frankly a racist assumption that Mexican food or Indian food should be cheap. That's not right.”

“Most of my life I've been a pretty pessimistic guy, and I've had a pretty dark view of human nature. It made me hopeful and made me feel better about the human species. We like to be good, we aspire to do good things.”

“When somebody's offering you food, they're telling you a story. They're telling you what they like, who they are. You turn your nose up at that important moment, the whole relationship changes, and it will never be the same.”