Anthony Bourdain Quotes

If you go to working class, and working poor areas of America, the food sources that are relegated to them are generally limited to unhealthy ones.

My tastes in what I eat at home would be very familiar to most people who cook for families. I just organize those things a little bit differently.

I'm really happy to see the explosion of interest in Korean food, and this hybrid Korean-American food.

When do you stop to de-douche?

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

Sometimes the greatest meals on vacations are the ones you find when Plan A falls through.

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

My family is very far from normal.

I think it's a universal truth that most chefs I know are happiest eating simple, unadorned good things.

In my house, neither my wife nor my daughter are impressed that I'm on television, and they remind me of that frequently.

People everywhere have been very, very good to me, whether I'm with or without cameras.

When I cook, I generally stick with what I know, what I'm comfortable with, and what I feel I've paid my dues learning, and am good at.

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.

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.

I think there's a tendency to over-jack and over-umami food these days.

I could do nothing but Brooklyn shows for the rest of my career, and I could die ignorant.

It's not normal, what I do. Just being on television isn't.

I love bacon, but I don't think we need it on everything.

I'm away 250 days a year. It's a tough situation.

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

I do my very best to avoid shark fin.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I'd give up just about everything else for that.

If you get an opportunity to work with David Simon, anybody with good taste would.

I wasn't that great a chef, and I don't think I'm that great a writer.

I like the fact that Melbourne always seems to support their chefs and promote them in ways I find really admirable.

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'd never done anything useful as far as my writing.

Drugs didn't work out too well for me.

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.

If people are working only rice and beans for much of their diet, it says something.

I wanted it to look like real cooking in someone's real home or just so out-of-there bizarre that it would be fun.

My love of soft, runny cheese - it's impossible to resist.

A good, stinky French cheese or a good Stilton. These are things I really, really love. Dessert I can obviously live without.

The ingredients of a hamburger seldom vary. It's a percentage of fat to lean meat, add salt and prepare and that's it. It shouldn't need a recipe.

A burger is something anyone can do, just follow the rules.

At the end of a dinner at my house, my kitchen sink is filled with dishes and there's nothing pretty about the garbage.

The cookbooks I value the most in my collection are the ones where you hear the author's voice and point-of-view in every recipe.

You'd have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I'd probably want to die in San Sebastian.

I managed to reach a depth of self-loathing that usually takes a night of drinking to achieve.

When I was writing 'Kitchen Confidential,' I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

I'd like to play bass like Bootsy Collins. I'm serious. That would be my dream.

I'm not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I'm going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I'm not a foreign correspondent.

I need the anesthetic qualities of the local fire water.

I'm a guy who should not have a lot of free time. But when it comes to vacation, I like to pull the plug completely. It's all about my daughter - I'm no longer the star of my own movie.

It's that show Friends. Ruined coffee forever.

New Orleans is a glorious mutation

It's been about a week without alcohol of any kind. I'm enjoying my new, clean-living lifestyle.

You dropped a 500-seat deuce on Times Square.

I could eat bloody Elvis - if you put enough vinegar on him.

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.