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New Orleans Quotes

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New Orleans Quotes

“We had driven miles to find the world's creamiest cheesecake and the world's largest pistachio nut and the world's sweetest corn on the cob. We had spent hours in blind taste testings of kosher hot dogs and double chocolate chip ice cream. When Julie went home to Fort Worth, she flew back with spareribs from Angelo's Beef Bar-B-Q, and when I went to New York, I flew back with smoked butterfish from Russ and Daughters. Once, in New Orleans, we all went to Mosca's for dinner, and we ate marinated crab, baked oysters, barbecued shrimp, spaghetti bordelaise, chicken with garlic, sausage with potatoes, and on the way back to town, a dozen oysters each at the Acme and beignets and coffee with chicory on the wharf. Then Arthur said, "Let's go to Chez Helene for the bread pudding," and we did, and we each had two. The owner of Chez Helene gave us the bread pudding recipe when we left, and I'm going to throw it in because it's the best bread pudding recipe I've ever eaten. It tastes like caramelized mush. Cream 2 cups sugar with 2 sticks butter. Then add 2 1/2 cups milk, one 13-ounce can evaporated milk, 2 tablespoons nutmeg, 2 tablespoons vanilla, a loaf of wet bread in chunks and pieces (any bread will do, the worse the better) and 1 cup raisins. Stir to mix. Pour into a deep greased casserole and bake at 350* for 2 hours, stirring after the first hour. Serve warm with hard sauce.”

“As Piper walked inside, she surmised that the place was part restaurant, part delicatessen, part butcher shop. One long wall was taken up with a sprawling glass-front refrigerated case housing all sorts of meats and cheeses waiting to be sliced. There were aisles of shelves lined with balsamic vinegars, oils, rice, pastas, salts, and seasonings. Customers sat eating sandwiches at several round tables to the side of the room. "What'll it be?" asked the teenager behind the counter. "I'm not sure," said Piper. "What's in a muffuletta?" The young man recited the ingredients. "Salami, pepperoni, ham, capicola, mortadella, Swiss cheese, provolone, and olive salad.”

“To encapsulate the notion of Mardi Gras as nothing more than a big drunk is to take the simple and stupid way out, and I, for one, am getting tired of staying stuck on simple and stupid. Mardi Gras is not a parade. Mardi Gras is not girls flashing on French Quarter balconies. Mardi Gras is not an alcoholic binge. Mardi Gras is bars and restaurants changing out all the CD's in their jukeboxes to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, and it is annual front-porch crawfish boils hours before the parades so your stomach and attitude reach a state of grace, and it is returning to the same street corner, year after year, and standing next to the same people, year after year--people whose names you may or may not even know but you've watched their kids grow up in this public tableau and when they're not there, you wonder: Where are those guys this year? It is dressing your dog in a stupid costume and cheering when the marching bands go crazy and clapping and saluting the military bands when they crisply snap to. Now that part, more than ever. It's mad piano professors converging on our city from all over the world and banging the 88's until dawn and laughing at the hairy-shouldered men in dresses too tight and stalking the Indians under Claiborne overpass and thrilling the years you find them and lamenting the years you don't and promising yourself you will next year. It's wearing frightful color combination in public and rolling your eyes at the guy in your office who--like clockwork, year after year--denies that he got the baby in the king cake and now someone else has to pony up the ten bucks for the next one. Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once.”

“Eugenie looked great, her short spiky auburn hair edged with conservative blond tips and her face wearing a minimum of makeup. Must be Mr. Natural’s influence. I gave her a hug and turned to meet Quince, who was sitting across from her. Okay, I could see the attraction. He had thick, honey-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail not unlike my own, and a green gemstone stud in one ear. He reached out a grasped my hand, shaking it firmly. “It’s great to meet you. Eugenie talks about you all the time.” “She talks a lot about you too, Quince.” The man had no idea. He smiled and his blue-green eyes were almost enthralling. “Most people call me Rand, but Eugenie likes my real name better than my nickname.” After a half hour of small talk, I wasn’t sure I liked Quince Randolph. He was drop-dead gorgeous, no question about that. But there was something off about him I couldn’t quite pinpoint. He stared too hard when he talked to you, made my eye contact than a normal person. I tried to dig into his head a little but came up blank, which was weird, except I’d done a heavy grounding ritual this morning. “You know, I just noticed something.” Eugenie had a funny look on her face. “You guys have the same hair and eye colo. I’d never realized it till I saw you sitting there across from each other.” “Maybe we’re very distantly related.” Rand smiled. “I doubt it,” I said, frowning. “I don’t have much family. And if we were related, I’d be pissed off that you have better cheekbones.”

“James was stiff, and his arm was asleep, and he wasn't sure he'd ever get the kink out of his neck, but he had a baby boy sleeping like a rock on his chest and a gorgeous woman sleeping like a rock up against his side, her cheek on his chest, some of her hair clutched in the baby's fist, and a shaggy dog sleeping like a rock on his left foot. James wouldn't have moved for a million dollars.”

“[Harper'd] wondered briefly if those novels were making her set her standards too high. But then she'd realized that no, actually, what those stories had done was help her not confuse lust and crushes and simple attraction and I-kind-of-like-him with something deeper and more passionate. And they'd helped her decide to wait for the real thing. She knew what love looked like. It just hadn't come along for her. Yet.”

“Magazine Street was a sea of green. Piper reveled in the pleasure and satisfaction of having finished the scene in her first feature film as she made her way through the crowds and watched the floats decorated by New Orleans marching clubs. The float riders threw carrots, potatoes, moon pies, and beads to the onlookers gathered on the sidewalk. Pets joined in the festivities as well, sporting leprechaun attire and green-tinted fur. Under a bright sun and a clear blue sky, families and friends were gathered for the opportunity to celebrate one of the biggest street parties of the year. Some set up ladders along the parade route, climbing atop for the best views. Others scaled trees and found perches among the branches. "Hey, mister, throw me something!" yelled a man next to Piper. Waving hands rose in the air as a head of cabbage came hurtling from the float. Everyone in the crowd lunged for it. The person who snagged it was roundly congratulated for the catch. "What's with the cabbage?" Piper asked the man standing next to her. "They aren't supposed to throw them, just hand them out. Somebody could get hurt by one of those things." The man shrugged. "But the tradition is to cook them for dinner on St. Patrick's Day night.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Satchie: Excuse me, I'm an enlisted man too. Nothing more was said. In the dark wooden room, Kenny and Satchie had the seethe of men with hardened hearts seered by the stench of burned human flesh. No smell like it, Satchie remembered. Gut-curling, episodic explosion of the soul that blasted even the bearest of men. So they hung in joints under Jax signs and Dixie beer relics where they drank their poison and enjoyed false remedy.”

“He blamed television, movies, and books for his love of ghosts. It was a fascination that’s been with him since his youth. He always loved watching or reading anything that had to do with ghosts and haunted locations, especially historic sites like New Orleans, Salem, Tombstone, Gettysburg, and Old San Juan.”

“I don't know. Chicken bones, frizzly hens, all that voodoo stuff gives me the creeps." He got up and put his arms around me. "How do you know about frizzly hens?" "I just do." "Strange." "Louise and Fayetteville." "Ah, yes, Louise. Well, do I give you the creeps?" "No." "That's right. And besides, there's a lot more to New Orleans than that. There's gumbo and bread pudding and fried chicken. There are old Victorian homes, music everywhere, and the friendliest, nicest people everywhere.”

“Why did you come to my door?” She wet her lips and whispered, “I promised my friend at work that tonight would be a night of yes.” Her final word carried a breathiness that had his blood rushing to his groin. His voice dropped to a raw growl more than a whisper. “What if I asked if I could kiss you?” Her eyes searched his as she whispered, “Yes.”

“She looked out the taxi window at the picturesque Creole cottages and brick Spanish Colonial houses on the way back to the bakery. Piper could understand why New Orleans was an attractive location for filming. The culturally rich neighborhoods and diverse locations, from bayou to big city, provided vivid backdrops. There were willing extras of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities available, as well as state-of-the-art sound stages and plenty of skilled crew members. Piper also knew that Louisiana offered attractive tax incentives to the film industry to bring in business to New Orleans. The city was working hard to earn the moniker "Hollywood of the South.”

“Louis found me in the rear parlor, the one more distant from the noises of the tourists in the Rue Royale, and with its windows open to the courtyard below. I was in fact looking out the window, looking for the cat again, though I didn't tell myself so, and observing how our bougainvillea had all but covered the high walls that enclosed us and kept us safe from the rest of the world. The wisteria was also fierce in its growth, even reaching out from the brick walls to the railing of the rear balcony and finding its way up to the roof. I could never quite take for granted the lush flowers of New Orleans. Indeed, they filled me with happiness whenever I stopped to really look at them and surrender to their fragrance, as though I still had the right to do so, as though I still were part of nature, as though I were still a mortal man.”

“It's worth getting out of bed some mornings. And it's a pleasure, especially if the pale winter sun is out and shining, to delight with your lover in the urban gift of your favorite café. Fresh coffee, steaming croissants, and the Sunday papers. Ah! All the way to ours, Alice and I talked about love and how many people don't get any while others get a lot, and how that unfairness probably accounts for the federal deficit and crooked contracting practices, and so on.”

“Is he from New Orleans originally?" "Born and raised." "The people here are born below the sea level and they spend their whole lives wanting to go back to where they came from. My own theory is that everyone from here was a mermaid in another lifetime and they are all trying to swim back to the bottom of the ocean. That Michael of yours will drag you down to the depths if you let him. It's not his fault either. That's where he's most comfortable.”

“I believe he's been asked to testify today," I told Lennox, who'd continued to track Truman's progress through the room. "He's a member of the historical undead, Truman Capote, the author. He wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood."... "Hi, Truman, you're sitting next to me," I said, pulling out his chair. I figured after he'd asked me to suck on his cherry, we should be on a first-name basis.”

“Then I shall tell you the truthful answers to the questions you asked, about my own intentions and motivations. They are not so simple."... He cocked an eyebrow and his cobalt eyes took on a playful sparkle. "If I were to avow that you are my immortal life's great passion, that I would give up immortality itself to be at your side and in your bed, you would not believe me, n'est-ce pas?”

“When I see you, Jolie, I see a woman who is far more than she realizes but who will someday grow into her powers. One who is much stronger than those who would trap her inside their cages or try to put her to harness. One with a bold intelligence, with whom I can laugh. One who surprises me." He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was so soft I had to strain to hear. "I see a woman who makes me feel alive again, like a man, and not like a wraith who has lived beyond his usefulness in a world that no longer needs him.”

“If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style.”