Quotes from Anthony Bourdain

Beirut traffic is horrendous, public transport is nearly nonexistent, and that it often may make more sense to walk if you're within a half mile of your destination.

if things look good today, they will most assuredly turn to shit tomorrow.

I was now a graduate of the best cooking school in the country – a valuable commodity on the open market – I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.

Like Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco or the Times Square of New York's seedier, darker era, Tangier's time as a freewheeling playground for artistic deviants has long passed.

And I made things worse—far worse—in all the drearily predictable ways. Underscore that sentence.

Live the dream for a bit. But keep your eyes open. And be careful. As you'll see, many visitors came to Tangier for a short vacation and remained for life. It's that kind of place.

Just being able to talk about this issue...is a privilege, subsidized in a yin/yang sort of a way, somewhere, by somebody taking it in the neck

I wrapped the cord around my neck, leaned forward with my full body weight, and ended my life. That thought was what got me through.

the difference between the stuff here, and the indifferently poured swill you get where you come from, is like night and day. One is beer, the other, angels sing celestial trombones.

That dried sawdust they sell in the cute little cans at the supermarket? You can throw that, along with the spice rack, right in the garbage.

The better question might be: Please tell me which of these scraps you would have been unable to use a few years ago—and exactly what do you have to do to them to make them what you would consider "safe"?

F. Dick makes a good one for about twenty-five bucks. It's stainless steel, but since it's serrated it doesn't really matter; after a couple of years of use, if the teeth start to wear down, you just buy yourself another one.

Global knives, a very good Japanese product which has — in addition to its many other fine qualities — the added attraction of looking really cool. Global makes a lot of knives in different sizes, so what do you need? One chefs knife. This should cut just about anything you might work with

This Cargill outfit is the largest private company in America. A hundred and sixteen billion dollars in revenue a year. And they feel the need to save a few cents on their low-end burgers by buying shit processed in ammonia? Scraps that have to be whipped or extracted or winnowed out or rendered before they can put them into a patty mix?

With a spoonful of nostalgia and even more sauce

Mexican food is about taking the time to do it right, about hours of slow simmering.

Right now, a defiant, young, creative generation of Mexican chefs like Eduardo are performing some of the most exciting new cooking anywhere on earth—a mixing of the very old and traditional, with the very new

What you hear from other Italians is that Naples isn't even Italy. "But that's a very Italian attitude to start with, a not-quite nation of city-states for whom the next village over will always be the worst place on earth.

As the first of two boys, I can't even imagine what it must be like for a little girl to see her dad leering at another of her sex. This creature will soon grow up to be a young woman and that's something I consider every day.

I'm an asshole. You should probably be an asshole too.

If you are easily offended by direct aspersions on your lineage, the circumstances of your birth, your sexuality, your appearance, the mention of your parents possibly commingling with livestock, then the world of professional cooking is not for you.

In Mexico City, as in any enlightened culture, street food is king.

What's left of her former glories, her days of empire, are in ruins, but those ruins continue to enchant us. You fall into a trance here.

Out of this world. Best tortilla ever. There's not even any pork in it.