Quotes from Anthony Bourdain

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.

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It's completely pointless.

I could do one show after another in China for the rest of my life and still die ignorant. There's a lot of places left to go.

What you're going to be eating in the next year is decided by chefs. If the consensus is that pot-bellies are in next season, that's what's on your plate. And I think that's a good thing, because we know, obviously, about food.

I'm always secretly the most pleased when a show just really, really looks good and when my camera guys are really happy with the images they got.

Don't dunk your nigiri in the soy sauce. Don't mix your wasabi in the soy sauce. If the rice is good, complement your sushi chef on the rice.

To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things - and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.

I don't snack. I don't generally eat sweets or drink soda. I never eat between meals or even before big ones.

I'm not Ted Nugent. My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature. I would never hunt. I would never wear fur. I would never go to a bullfight. I'm not really a meat and potatoes guy.

Since the very beginning, Emeril's had a sense of humor about me calling him names and poking fun at him.

Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the language and haven't been before - that's really satisfying to me. I like that.

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 did go into the Amazonian region of Brazil. They have prehistoric river fish that weigh in at around 600 pounds, which you don't see anywhere else. And foods that cannot be exported or even found in other parts of Brazil.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

I'm a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

To be treated well in places where you don't expect to be treated well, to find things in common with people you thought previously you had very, very little in common with, that can't be a bad thing.

It just seems there's better things to do in your life than be on television if it's not interesting, if it's not challenging, if it's not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I'll stop making television.

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.

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.

I'm married to an Italian woman, and I used to love cooking Italian at home, because it's one-pot cooking. But my wife does not approve of my Italian cooking.

Without new ideas success can become stale

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.

your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.