"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit."
— Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential)

"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. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold.

Oh, I'll accomodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine."
— Anthony Bourdain

"No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American. "
— Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)

"I don't have to agree with you to like you or respect you."
— Anthony Bourdain

"I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it."
— Anthony Bourdain

"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 (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)

"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

"There is no Final Resting Place of the Mind."
— Anthony Bourdain

"I don't have to agree with you to like you or respect you."
— Anthony Bourdain

"Don't touch my dick, don't touch my knife."
— Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)

"It's as if Japanese men, all to aware that deep inside they'd like to stomp Tokyo flat, breathe fire, and do truly terrible and disgusting things to women, have built themselves the most beautiful of prisons for their rampaging ids. Instead of indulging their fantasies, they focus on food, or landscaping, or the perfect cup of tea -- or a single slab of o-toro tuna -- letting themselves go only at baseball games and office parties."
— Anthony Bourdain (No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach)

". I could no longer bear even to pick up the phone; I'd just listen to the answering machine, afraid or unwilling to pick up, the plaintive entreaties of the caller an annoyance. If they had good news, it would simply make me envious and unhappy; if they had bad news, I was the last guy in the world who could help. Whatever I had to say to anybody would have been inappropriate. I was in hiding, in a deep, dark hole"
— Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)

"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistant 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. Vegeterians 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 (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 (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 (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)