15 Anthony Bourdain Quotes About Life That Made Us Love Him Even More
The late Anthony Bourdain was known for his candor, passion for food and travel, and for living as his most authentic self. From his years of traveling, whether for books like No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach, or TV shows like Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, the beloved chef gained a lot of wisdom, and he sure loved to share it.
Below you'll find some of my favorite Anthony Bourdain quotes about life, ranked in the order selected by voters on Ranker.com.
1. Wing it
I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I’m always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary.
2. Respect your staff
I’d put aside my psychotic rage, after many years being awful to line cooks, abusive to waiters, bullying to dishwashers. It’s terrible -- and counter-productive -- to make people feel like idiots for working hard for you.
- "Anthony Bourdain: ‘I put aside my psychotic rage, after many years being awful to cooks,’" The Guardian
3. It's a start
Yeah, food may not be the answer to world peace, but it’s a start.
- a 2016 interview with PBS NewsHour
4. It's nice to have a friend
In times of uncertainty and unpleasantness, when all around me seems to threaten to spin into chaos, it’s nice to have friends. It’s especially nice when those friends can cook.
- "Under Over Sideways Down," Medium
5. Perspective is important
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.
- No Reservations, season one, episode 13
6. Keep it moving
If I do have any advice for anybody, any final thought, if I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in somebody else's shoes -- or at least eat their food -- it's a plus for everybody. Open your mind. Get up off the couch. Move.
- No Reservations, season nine, episode 10
7. The beauty of IHOP
It is indeed, marvelous, an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful, and nothing hurts. Where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color, or degree of inebriation is welcome. It’s warm, yellow glow a beacon of hope and salvation, inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered, all across the south, to come inside. A place of safety and nourishment. It never closes. It is always, always faithful, always there for you.
8. Travel, travel, travel
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."
- Parts Unknown, season two, episode four
9. Know how to make an omelette
Learn how to cook a f***ing omelet ... I mean, what nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast? You look good doing it, and it's a nice thing to do for somebody you just had sex with. I think it's good for the world. It's a good thing all around. It's easy ... the way you make an omelet reveals your character.
- "Bourdain's tip for men, celebrity-chef-hating and vegan 'self-indulgence,'" Playboy
10. Put in the work
I learned every important lesson that I ever really needed, in the rest of my life, as a dishwasher. It was the first time in my life I went home respecting myself.
- a 2016 interview with PBS NewsHour
11. Allow room for exploration
It's punishing. The sort of frenzied compression of time needed to take the tour, to see the sights, keeps you in a bubble that prevents you from having magic happen to you. Nothing unexpected or wonderful is likely to happen if you have an itinerary in Paris filled with the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.
- "All the Things You're Doing Wrong When You Travel, According To Anthony Bourdain," Money
12. Enjoy the ride
Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
- Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
13. The perfect meal
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: On tour with the guerrilla gourmet," BookPage
14. Home for misfits
In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.
- "Don't Eat Before Reading This," The New Yorker
15. F**k sensible
Is it better to be smart or to be a fool? The answer to that question seems simple. Who, after all, wants to be a fool? But we are happily fools for love at various times in our lives. There’s no other way, really. That leap of faith to give yourself to another person requires a willing suspension of disbelief — a denial of statistics, empirical evidence and good sense. But we do it all the time. And I think, judging from the sweep of popular music history, we tend to like it like that. Who, after all, wants a 'sensible' relationship?
Might it follow then that we shouldn’t aspire to live always by sensible choices? That what is good for us in the short term is not always the 'best' way? To live always by what’s right now in front of our faces and the imperatives of keeping things running smoothly for me and mine, good business, no problems — that’s the kind of shopkeeper mentality that got the world into a whole lot of shit back in the day. So, maybe, just maybe f**k sensible.
- "The Right Thing," Medium
This was originally published on Ranker.com.
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