Quotes from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don't have.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Don't lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don't do it again. Ever”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Don't touch my dick, don't touch my knife.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Assume the worst. About everybody. But don't let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone you work with is a miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious and corrupt asshole shouldn't prevent you from enjoying their company, working with them or finding them entertaining.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime...Please, treat your garlic with respect...Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“So who the hell, exactly, are these guys, the boys and girls in the trenches? You might get the impression from the specifics of my less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn't be too far off base. The business, as respected three-star chef Scott Bryan explains it, attracts 'fringe elements', people for whom something in their lives has gone terribly wrong. Maybe they didn't make it through high school, maybe they're running away from something-be it an ex-wife, a rotten family history, trouble with the law, a squalid Third World backwater with no opportunity for advancement. Or maybe, like me, they just like it here. ”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost.
But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“[When I die], I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living--all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbones and Pernod.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“I wanted to write in Kitchenese, the secret language of cooks, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dunked french fries for a summer job or suffered under the despotic rule of a tyrannical chef or boobish owner.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Whachoo want, white boy? Burn cream? A Band-Aid?
Then he raised his own enormous palms to me, brought them up real close so I could see them properly; the hideous constellation of water-filled blisters, angry red welts from grill marks, the old scars, the raw flesh where steam or hot fat had made the skin simply roll off. They looked like the claws of some monstrous science-fiction crustacean, knobby and calloused under wounds old and new. I watched, transfixed, as Tyrone - his eyes never leaving mine - reached slowly under the broiler and, with one naked hand, picked up a glowing-hot sizzle-platter, moved it over to the cutting board, and set it down in front of me.
He never flinched.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Good food and good eating are about risk.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Writing anything is a treason of sorts.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“At the base of my right forefinger is an inch-and-a-half diagonal callus, yellowish-brown in color, where the heels of all the knives I've ever owned have rested, the skin softened by constant immersion in water. It distinguishes me immediately as a cook, as someone who's been on the job a long time. You can feel it when I shake my hand, just as I feel it on others of my profession. It's a secret sign, a sort of Masonic handshake without the silliness.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“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, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“My love for chaos, conspiracy and the dark side of human nature colors the behavior of my charges, most of whom are already living near the fringes of acceptable conduct.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Under 'Reasons for Leaving Last Job', never give the real reason, unless it's money or ambition.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.”
― Anthony Bourdain, quote from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

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“إنَّ الذاكرة , كما تعلم , هي الفخُّ الأكبر .”
― Paul Auster, quote from In the Country of Last Things

“There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes, there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. it is called implosion. When an amphibian accustomed to the black depths rises above a certain level, when the pressure to which it adapts itself is lifted, the body bursts inwardly. Are we not familiar with this spectacle in the human being also? The norsemen who went berserk, the malay who runs amuck—are these not examples of implosion and explosion? When the cup is full it runs over. but when the cup and that which it contains are one substance, what then? There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such overbrimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. something intangible, something inexplicable, was given out—and received. In the life of a human being it may happen that the moon never comes to the full. In the life of some human beings it would seem, indeed, that the only mysterious phenomenon observable is that of perpetual eclipse. In the case of those afflicted with genius, whatever the form it may take, we are almost frightened to observe that there is nothing but a continuous waxing and waning of the moon. Rarer still are the anomalous ones who, having come to the full, are so terrified by the wonder of it that they spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to stifle that which gave them birth and being. The war of the mind is the story of the soul-split. When the moon was at full there were those who could not accept the dim death of diminution; they tried to hang full-blown in the zenith of their own heaven. They tried to arrest the action of the law which was manifesting itself through them, through their own birth and death, in fulfillment and transfiguration. Caught between the tides they were sundered; the soul departed the body, leaving the simulacrum of a divided self to fight it out in the mind. Blasted by their own radiance they live forever the futile quest of beauty, truth and harmony. Depossessed of their own effulgence they seek to possess the soul and spirit of those to whom they are attracted. They catch every beam of light; they reflect with every facet of their hungry being. instantly illumined, When the light is directed towards them, they are also speedily extinguished. The more intense the light which is cast upon them the more dazzling—and blinding—they appear. Especially dangerous are they to the radiant ones; it is always towards these bright and inexhaustible luminaries that they are most passionately drawn…”
― Henry Miller, quote from Sexus

“What sort of mother talks about whores on her deathbed? Your mother wouldn’t do that, would she?"

"I have no idea,” Grey said, “The situation has fortunately not arisen.”
― Diana Gabaldon, quote from Lord John and the Private Matter

“He never seemed to get tired. Always first up and ready to move on. Never afraid of what lay ahead.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Fading Echoes

“[...] But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of actions. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.”
― Alan Bennett, quote from The Uncommon Reader

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