Anthony Bourdain

We went on, calling for more, our appetites beginning to attract notice from the other chefs and some of the customers who’d never it seemed, seen anyone – especially Westerners with our kind of appetites

Tsukiji, Tokyo’s central fish market, puts New York’s Fulton Street to shame. It’s bigger, better, and unlike its counterpart in Manhattan a destination worth visiting if only to gape

Things were different here in that the Japanese market workers had no compunction about looking you in the eye, even nudging you out of the way.

In Tokyo, it’s apparently okay, even de rigueur, to go out with the boss and the boys from the office and get completely, stuttering, out-of-control drunk.

I knew I could live here now. I’d learned a few things, not much, but enough to negotiate traffic, feed myself, get drunk, get around town

The idea of not returning the next day to repay the debt was, in typically Japanese thinking, unthinkable

Be ready to lead, follow, or get out of the way

If you keep asking yourself questions like these, you will find yourself slipping into martyr mode, unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction and death

I tend to get philosophical on Sunday mornings

My nails, such as they are –I gnaw them in the taxi home from work –are filthy; there’s dried animal blood under the cuticles, and crushed black pepper, beef fat and sea salt