On traveling

If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can.

Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody.

Open your mind, get up off the couch, move…

If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel — as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them — wherever you go…

Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown…

I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find the perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one.

Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I’m always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary…

Travel changes you.

As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you.

Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable.

Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body.

You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.

Anthony Bourdain