“New Orleans' rebellious and free-spirited personality is nothing if not resilient. And so the disruptive energies of the place- its vibrancy and eccentricity, its defiance and nonconformity, and yes, its violence and depravity- are likely to live on.”
Source: Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans
“This was, after all, New Orleans in 1890- the Crescent City of the Gilded Age, where aliases of convenience and unconventional living arrangements were anything but out of the ordinary, at least in certain parts of town. Identities were fluid here, and names and appearances weren't always the best guide to telling who was who.”
Source: Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans
“New Orleans, it was often observed, was the first American metropolis to build an opera house, but the last to build a sewage system.”
Source: Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans
“We believe that, despite a possibly cruel temperament and an impetuous nature that she followed throughout her life, Madame Delphine Macarty Lopez Blanque Lalaurie was not a serial killer, a sexual sadist or a perpetrator of bizarre medical experiments. She was a willful, spoiled, beautiful Creole socialite whose temper led her down the path of infamy.”
Source: Mad Madame LaLaurie: New Orleans' Most Famous Murderess Revealed
“The wild notes of tuba and trumpet and trombone rattled and hummed through the trees. In the first group of musicians, there were kids as young as fourteen playing the tuba and one kid who probably couldn’t drive banging a bass drum. They stomped together in rhythm to the music. Two ladies had dressed up in what looked like princess outfits. They wore white gloves and socks with tassels.”
Source: Imogene in New Orleans
“He turned around to see the bass drum popping and the horn sections pointing their instruments to the balconies and sending glorious notes to the rooftops.”
Source: Imogene in New Orleans
“A good crowd had formed along the sidewalk and the concrete ledge that bordered Louis Armstrong Park. The anticipation was dizzying...New Orleans had the big-boy parades and [Jackson & Billy] couldn't wait to attend a second line...”
Source: Imogene in New Orleans
“The job of the writer isn't to answer questions. The job of the writer is to ask the questions for which there are no answers.”
“Steam fingers reached up through Decatur's freshly scoured sidewalks as they did each morning, the ancestors of the Choctaw and Saint-Dominguens and Spanish and French, no doubt reminding them they would not reliquish this colony again to the Americans.”
Source: Tiny Righteous Acts
“The whiffs of coffee and chicory and fried dough danced awkwardly with the occasional and unmistakable wafts of urine left by naive tourists or wild fraternity brothers or desperate homeless people or all of the above. Beset among throngs of tourists identified by lanyards and name tags, and dramatic straw hats, the board awaited the delivery of mountains of beignets dusted like the Alps with sweet snow.”