Top 200 Anthony Bourdain Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I listen a lot to how people speak. I’ve read a great many good books in my life. I had some excellent English teachers. Surely, those things were helpful.”

— Anthony Bourdain

52. “Selling out is getting a job.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

— Anthony Bourdain

54. “Where once they used to say, ‘Cocaine is God’s way of saying you have too much money’ – now, maybe EDM is. Come ye lords and princelings of douchedom.”

— Anthony Bourdain

55. “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.”

— Anthony Bourdain

56. “I’d like to play bass like Bootsy Collins. I’m serious. That would be my dream.”

— Anthony Bourdain

57. “Going to Southeast Asia for the first time and tasting that spectrum of flavors – that certainly changed my whole palate, the kind of foods I crave. A lot of the dishes I used to love became boring to me.”

— Anthony Bourdain

58. “If you have a good experience in a restaurant, you tell 2 people. If you have a bad experience, you tell 10 people.”

— Anthony Bourdain

59. “Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting. Please, treat your garlic with respect.”

— Anthony Bourdain

60. “People confuse me. Food doesn’t.”

— Anthony Bourdain

61. “Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don’t have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they’re going to do – and everyone else.”

— Anthony Bourdain

62. “I admire vegetarians who refuse to eat nothing but vegetables in their homes, but I also admire those who put aside those principles or those preferences when they travel. Just to be a good guest.”

— Anthony Bourdain

63. “Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch. It’s a high-speed collaboration resembling, at its best, ballet or modern dance.”

— Anthony Bourdain

64. “I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.”

— Anthony Bourdain

65. “Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance, as they say in the army – and I always, always want to be ready. Just like Bigfoot.”

— Anthony Bourdain

66. “I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas – fat, drugged, and completely out of it.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

— Anthony Bourdain

68. “In that sense, what a great way to live, if you could always do things that interest you, and do them with people who interest you.”

— Anthony Bourdain

69. “Good food and good eating are about risk.”

— Anthony Bourdain

70. “There has ling been a happy symbiotic relationship between kitchen and bar. Simply put, the kitchen wants booze, and the bartender wants food.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

— Anthony Bourdain

72. “Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman – not an artist.”

— Anthony Bourdain

73. “I believe celiac disease is a very serious ailment, and if you’re diagnosed with it, I’m pleased that there are now gluten-free options, but these people who are treating gluten as, you know, an equivalent of Al Qaeda are worrying to me.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

— Anthony Bourdain

75. “Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.”

— Anthony Bourdain

76. “America’s most dangerous export was, is and always will be our fast-food outlets.”

— Anthony Bourdain

77. “I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

— Anthony Bourdain

79. “Everybody should come here. Everyone should see how complicated, how deeply troubled, and yet at the same time, beautiful and awesome the world can be. Everyone should experience, even as the clouds gather, what’s at stake, what could be lost, what’s still here.”

— Anthony Bourdain

80. “When do you stop to de-douche?”

— Anthony Bourdain

81. “People everywhere have been very, very good to me, whether I’m with or without cameras.”

— Anthony Bourdain

82. “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

83. “When I’m back in New York – and this is a terrible thing to complain about – I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I’d like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It’s kind of like being in the Mafia.”

— Anthony Bourdain

84. “And I had my first oyster. Now, this was a truly significant event. I remember it like I remember losing my virginity – and in many ways, more fondly. August.”

— Anthony Bourdain

85. “And chicken is boring. Chefs see it as a menu item for people who don’t know what they want to eat.”

— Anthony Bourdain

86. “The fact that over 50 per cent of the residents of Toronto are not from Canada, that is always a good thing, creatively, and for food especially. That is easily a city’s biggest strength, and it is Toronto’s unique strength.”

— Anthony Bourdain

87. “Just because we are not Italian, does not mean we cannot appreciate Michelangelo, it is the same with cuisine.”

— Anthony Bourdain

88. “Like I said before, your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride. Sure, it’s a ‘play you pay’ sort of an adventure, but you knew that already, every time you ever ordered a taco or a dirty-water hot dog.”

— Anthony Bourdain

89. “Good food and good eating are about risk. Every once in a while an oyster, for instance, will make you sick to your stomach. Does this mean you should stop eating oysters? No way.”

— Anthony Bourdain

90. “To have a child is to give fate a hostage.”

— Anthony Bourdain

91. “Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London is invaluable. As is Nicolas Freleng’s The Kitchen, David Blum’s Flash in the Pan, the Batterberrys’ fine account of American restaurant history, On the Town in New York, and Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel.”

— Anthony Bourdain

92. “Remember, brunch is only served once a week – on the weekends. Buzzword here, ‘Brunch Menu’. Translation? ‘Old, nasty odds and ends, and 12 dollars for two eggs with a free Bloody Mary’.”

— Anthony Bourdain

93. “One of life’s terrible truths is that women like guys who seem to know what they’re doing.”

— Anthony Bourdain

94. “I am not a fan of people who abuse service staff. In fact, I find it intolerable. It’s an unpardonable sin as far as I’m concerned, taking out personal business or some other kind of dissatisfaction on a waiter or busboy.”

— Anthony Bourdain

95. “For their own good, vegetarians should never be allowed near fine beers and ales. It will only make them loud and belligerent, and they lack the physical strength and aggressive nature to back up any drunken assertions.”

— Anthony Bourdain

96. “My last semester at Vassar, I’d taken to wearing nunchakus in a strap-on holster and carrying around a samurai sword – that should tell you all you need to know.”

— Anthony Bourdain

97. “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.”

— Anthony Bourdain

98. “I’m not impressed by any cooks who can brag about a filet mignon. A guy who can take the neck of a shank or can use tripe to make into something delicious is really interesting to me; that’s impressive.”

— Anthony Bourdain

99. “What’s the opposite of suck? Un-suck?”

— Anthony Bourdain

100. “A proper saute pan should cause serious head injury if brought down hard against someone else’s skull. If you have any doubts about which will dent, the victim’s head or your pan, then throw that pan right in the trash.”

— Anthony Bourdain