Anthony Bourdain Quotes

As a writer, when you fall in love with a place, you want to spend more time in it, either physically or mentally, and so you write about it.

Come to a book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it, and draw your own map.... A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it.

What do you want art to give you? What do you want cultural experience to give you? Shouldn't it be in-depth, profound experiences which have some satisfaction and can be retained in your four senses and your imagination for the rest of your life?

Intervention giving is emotional and the results are measurable.

We need to get back to trusting our emotional rapport with children, to seeing a child's beauty and singling that child out. That's how the mentor system works - you're caught up in the fantasy of another person. Your imagination and their come together.

I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.

Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.

The aim of love is to love. No more, no less.

The real reason women fall in love abroad is not that they are free of domestic inhibitions but that they translate their love of stone and place into love of flesh. ... Is this true?

Literature gives us a memory of lives we did not lead.

If you're doing a musical, you should be out to give the audience something special, emotional, an uplifting feeling, something that stays with them.

I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

You can travel through literature, and you can expand your mind through literature. It's so cheap to buy that kind of ticket.

I'm a romanticist in many ways. I never get behind the wheel of my boat and dropping the anchor without saying to myself, secretly giving my orders to the crew "All right, lift the anchor, we're on our way to South Hampton. We're gonna beat them there with this load of tea!"

Books opened up a whole new world to me. Through them I discovered new ideas, traveled to new places, and met new people. Books helped me learn to understand other people and they taught me a lot about myself. ... Some books you never forget. Some characters become your friends for life.

Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.

The one thing that gives you faith is the fact that people can be apart physically but they can still have an emotional connection.

a writer is a foreign country

Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

A single metaphor can give birth to love.

Writers do not write about a place because they belong there, but because they want to.

Any human act that gives rise to something new is referred to as a creative act, regardless of whether what is created is a physical object or some mental or emotional construct that lives within the person who created it and is known only to him.

Literature and film have a way of lifting you from your own existence and transporting you to some foreign place and putting you in the shoes with an experience different than your own.