Anthony Bourdain was the living embodiment of the phrase “food for thought.” His writing and TV shows like Parts Unknown started with food, but they quickly scaled up Maslow’s hierarchy; becoming less about the meals on the plate and more about the people across the table. As Barack Obama wrote: “He taught us about food — but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown.” Anthony Bourdain, Chef, Travel Host and Author, Is Dead at 61.

+ “I have a tattoo on my arm, that says, in ancient Greek, ‘I am certain of nothing.’ I think that’s a good operating principle. I love showing up to a place thinking it’s going to be one way and having all sorts of stupid preconceptions or prejudices, and then in even a painful and embarrassing way, being proved wrong.”

+ Last week, Bourdain purchased a painting called, “The sky is falling, I am learning to live with it.”

+ Bourdain burst onto the media scene with his New Yorker piece: Don’t Eat Before Reading This. “Your first two hundred and seven Wellfleet oysters may transport you to a state of rapture, but your two hundred and eighth may send you to bed with the sweats, chills, and vomits. Gastronomy is the science of pain.” (So too is the human condition.)

+ Losing both Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain to suicide in the same week is a harsh reminder that no truer words have been sung than REM’s line: Everybody hurts. In life, both Spade and Bourdain were exceptional. In death, they are part of an increasingly common trend.