“Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.”

“New Orleans, city of roaches, city of decay, city of our family, and of happy, happy people.”

“The only excursion of my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge. . . . New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive.”

“The oyster was an animal worthy of New Orleans, as mysterious and private and beautiful as the city itself. If one could accept that oysters build their houses out of their lives, one could imagine the same of New Orleans, whose houses were similarly and resolutely shuttered against an outside world that could never be trusted to show proper sensitivity toward the oozing delicacies within.”

“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

“After the storm, many citizens left New Orleans to live elsewhere, but those who stayed were determined to rebuild. They loved their city.”