Quotes by Anthony Bourdain

“Im not afraid to look like an idiot.”

“Im not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do.”

“My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature.”

“No Reservations”

“There is no script at all for whats said on camera,”

“I think (Travel Channel) knows its not getting Jamie Oliver or Rachel Ray when they throw their lot in with me.”

“They seek, consciously or not, to create a clean zone around their all-important bodies: an area free of dirt, smoke, uncomfortable ideas or pleasure.”

“Oh my God, that was a religious experience, ... In the words of Homer Simpson, the pig is a magical animal.”

“Its not as much an expose as it is a memoir, with some things that seem to have shocked and horrified some of the civilian population,”

“ Ill make fun of the French, thank you very much.”

You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.

I wanted to write in Kitchenese, the secret language of cooks, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dunked french fries for a summer job or suffered under the despotic rule of a tyrannical chef or boobish owner.

Early moralists who believed that taking too much pleasure at the table led inexorably to bad character-or worse, to sex-were (in the best-case scenario, anyway) absolutely right.

Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taquerias mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.

If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.

The journey is part of the experience - an expression of the seriousness of ones intent. One doesnt take the A train to Mecca.

O enchanted land of my childhood, a cultural petri dish from which regularly issues forth greatness. New Jersey, in case you didnt know it, has got beaches. And theyre not all crawling with roid-raging trolls with reality shows. I grew up summering on those beaches and they are awesome. Jerseys got farmland, beautiful bedroom communities where that woman from Real Housewives who looks like Dr. Zaius does not live nor anyone like her. Even the refineries, the endless cloverleaves of turnpikes and expressway twisting and unknowable patterns over the wetlands that are to me somehow beautiful. To know Jersey is to love her.

Looking at these photographs, I know that I will never understand the world I live in or fully know the places Ive been. Ive learned for sure only what I dont know - and how much I have to learn.

I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I’m always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary.

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.