Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain Quotes
42 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living—all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
The room smelled like a gust of wind from Satan's anus.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
Norman Mailer described the desire to be cool as a "decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
There's something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon. A not-too-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar - even in this fake-ass Irish pub.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
I won't eat in a restaurant with filthy bathrooms. This isn't a hard call. They let you see the bathrooms. If the restaurant can't be bothered to replace the puck in the urinal or keep the toilets and floors clean, then just imagine what their refrigeration and work spaces look like.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
Naturally, I'm misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
You have to love a town where you can both smoke and gamble in a pharmacy.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
Always entertain the possibility that something, no matter how squiggly and scary looking, might just be good.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
But I do think the idea that basic cooking skills are a virtue, that the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill, should become as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one's own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone … Bad food is fake food … food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people's ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives. Food that's too safe, too pasteurized, too healthy – it's bad! There should be some risk, like unpasteurized cheese. Food is about rot, and decay, and fermentation…. as much as it is also about freshness.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
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.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
Good food does lead to sex. As it should. And in a perfect world, good music does too.
Anthony Bourdain
Source
Report...
Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
Anthony Bourdain
1
2
Quote of the day
Men were only made into "men" with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally "a man" any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.
Wyndham Lewis
Anthony Bourdain
Creative Commons
Born:
June 25, 1956
Died:
June 8, 2018
(aged 61)
Bio:
Anthony Michael Bourdain was an American chef, author, and television personality.
Known for:
Kitchen Confidential (2000)
Medium Raw (2010)
A Cook's Tour (2001)
Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook (2004)
Most used words:
food
life
eat
bad
animals
meals
travel
learn
marks
places
cheese
time
love
cooks
meat
Anthony Bourdain on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
American Chef Quotes
Chef Quotes
20th-century Chef Quotes
Related Author
Andrew Zimmern
American Chef
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes