Anthony Bourdain

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

How much longer am I going to do this?

I don’t know. I love it, you see

but she still wakes up next to me every morning, laughs at my jokes on occasion, and helpfully points out when I’m being an asshole

We saw someone who loved food, not just the life of the cook.

If I need a favor at four o'clock in the morning, whether it's a quick loan, a shoulder to cry on, a sleeping pill, bail money, or just someone to pick me up in a car in a bad neighborhood in the driving rain, I'm definitely not calling up a fellow writer. I'm calling my sous-chef, or a former sous-chef, or my saucier, someone I work with or have worked with over the last twenty-plus years.

I want to tell you about the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly - a subculture whose centuries-old militaristic hierarchy and ethos of 'rum, buggery and the lash' make for a mix of unwavering order and nerve-shattering chaos - because I find it all quite comfortable, like a nice warm bath. I can move around easily in this life. I speak the language. In the small, incestuous community of chefs and cooks in New York City, I know the people, and in my kitchen, I know how to behave (as opposed to in real life, where I'm on shakier ground).

My little French friends were, I was astonished to find, allowed to have a cigarette on Sunday, were given watered vin ordinaire at the dinner table, and best of all, they owned Velo Solex motorbikes. This was the way to raise kids, I recall thinking, unhappy that my mother did not agree.