Volkan

“A psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“I was now a graduate of the best cooking school in the country – a valuable commodity on the open market – I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Iceberg Slim did for the pimp what Jean Genet did for the homosexual and thief and William Burroughs for the junky: articulate the thoughts and feelings of someone who had been there. The big difference is that they were white. Unlike them, and despite one Harvard study of Pimp as a ‘transgressive novel’, Slim was, and still is, marginalised as a writer. It’s ironic and indicative of the institutionalised racism of English-speaking society that someone whose influence on Western culture is now probably greater than any touted (white) writer of all postwar generations finds himself in this peculiar position. Literature, always the most culturally hegemonic art form, has basically shut Slim out, in a way the music industry tried (unsuccessfully) to do with black artists for years.”
― Iceberg Slim, Pimp: The Story Of My Life

“Personally, I’d prefer to eat food that tastes good and is an honest reflection of its ingredients, than a 3-foot-tall caprice constructed from lemon grass, lawn trimmings, coconuts and red curry. You could lose an eye trying to eat that. When a job applicant starts telling me how Pacific Rim-job cuisine turns him on and inspires him, I see trouble coming. Send me another Mexican dishwasher anytime. I can teach him to cook. I can’t teach character. Show up at work on time six months in a row and we’ll talk about red curry paste and lemon grass. Until then, I have four words for you: ‘Shut the fuck up.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly