Bourdain Quotes

“You’ll never know the consequences of getting what you want until you get what you want.”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“In the Greece episode [of Parts Unknown], he asks a question in the voice-over, something to the effect of, “Is it worse to be in a bad place with people you like, or in a beautiful place all alone?” So much of his life was going to beautiful places and being all alone.”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“The desire to travel to those places, I totally understand the appeal. I also understand the pain associated with it, and that it comes from - Just as comedy often comes from a dark place, if you are entirely content, you don't spend two hundred days a year traveling the world. There's a certain restlessness I think that is inherent in that desire. (Anderson Cooper)”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“He had expressed his desire [to a TMZ reporter, who’d ambushed him in an airport parking lot with a video crew] to cook hemlock, a very Shakespearean entrée, for Trump and Kim Jong-un. I guess it’s just a matter of protocol; the Secret Service had to make sure he wasn’t serious”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“Obviously they can’t do room service cleanup, but if you kill someone by accident, they will remove the body, no questions asked.”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“Who gets to tell the stories? This is a question asked often. The answer, in this case, for better or for worse, is, “I do.” At least this time out. I do my best. I look. I listen. But in the end, I know: it’s my story,”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“On June 8, 2018, with the news of Tony having taken his own life, I was reminded that the labels we put onto others have no bearing on someone else’s pain. The best we can do is to expose our own pain to daylight and pay attention to the twilight messages we might otherwise miss from our loved ones. [Karen Rinaldi, (It’s Great to) Suck at Something (New York: Atria, 2019)]”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“What about a lust for life that takes you down dark paths, that it’s your job to overcome? What’s that quote—“Wisdom comes from experience; experience comes from bad decisions,” right? It’s interesting, admirable, and exciting to watch someone who’s chasing his passions at a pace that you cannot do yourself.”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“JOSH HOMME: It’s hard to make friends when you don’t know why someone wants to know you, because you have some notoriety. He was in the beginning stages of that, which really, at the end, was a major contributor to why we’re talking about him, and not to him.”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“I remember, when I heard the news that he’d died, I thought, So many people have lost their anchor.”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

“CHRIS COLLINS: It’s an inability to break. He did not die of a broken heart. He would still be here if he allowed his heart to be broken, I think. That’s what you do, you break and then you mend, and he couldn’t break this time.”
― Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography