Orleans Quotations

We owe it to the flood victims of New Orleans to give them truthful answers as to why this event took place and to assure our citizens that tragedies like this will never happen again.

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens in New Orleans, goes home with you.

The music is just so rich and part of the culture there. I suddenly felt like I needed to go on this mission to make sure we save New Orleans because - not that I can save anything - but it's so much part of what this country is, this whole mix of people coming together and doing this thing.

What's weird is the Hot Boys and the whole New Orleans Cash Money thing had a really big impact on the Bay when that was popping off. I don't all the way understand it. I mean, I know that they were big everywhere and had a lot of commercial success in the mid to late '90s, but they were really, really felt in the Bay Area.

The immediate, highest priority need, in my humble opinion, is that we build quickly the interim structures that can channel water away from population and businesses in the New Orleans area.

The inconveniences we faced within this state are minor compared to... New Orleans.

After Hurricane Katrina, over New Orleans, my helicopter crashed and the pilot and I were only saved because we fell on the roof of a flooded house that absorbed the shock. When the helicopter was spiraling downward out of control, I didn't expect to survive at all.

New Orleans is like a big musical gumbo. The sound I have is from being in the city my whole life.

Invite the best and brightest to compete for a grand prize to come up with designs, including new zoning, building codes and so forth, for New Orleans that could make it safe from water, and let the state and city pick the plan that works best for Louisiana.

I was just mind-blown to find that New Orleans is just so much more fun and interesting than I had ever thought.

So the mayor of New Orleans would have used his own buses had the people had been white?

My last trip to New Orleans was for the fifth anniversary of Katrina, and I had the awesome opportunity to bring my family down. We all worked on a house together and met some of the families.

And if citizens of New Orleans who are really contemplating coming back heard that we're really intent upon making the place secure again - regardless of whether the levees held or not - then I think a rebuilding process would really take shape.

New Orleans is awake all night, and every night is a party.

In New Orleans, where I'm from, the average household income, with two working parents, two kids, a dog and a little fence is $16,000 a year, so $15,000 for a movie sounds pretty good.

Jazz came out of New Orleans, and that was the forerunner of everything. You mix jazz with European rhythms, and that's rock n' roll, really. You can make the argument that it all started on the streets of New Orleans with the jazz funerals.

Before I went to New Orleans, I was a little scared of New Orleans. I don't know why. I had only been there a few times. Something about it made me feel nervous, knowing a bit about the history.

The condition in New Orleans was changing every day. I said, why don't we appropriate another $10 billion, come back and look at the situation, and do another $10 billion every week, or every 10 days?

I worked as a telemarketer for an SAT-prep company. That was the worst of it, because I had to call people in post-Katrina New Orleans and offer them this very, very expensive SAT class. And I'm not even a good salesman.

New Orleans has a unique history as a great melting pot of all kinds of cultures, and that manifests itself now through the food, the music, and the kinds of people who live there.

I didn't date my wife in high school, but she was definitely by far the coolest woman there. She was definitely the most beautiful, but she also marched to the beat of her own drummer. I was in New Orleans 10 years after high school and my friend played matchmaker with us, and that's kind of how we got together.

Pensacola isn't Florida, really. It's the Panhandle. It's right up there near Alabama and Louisiana. It's, like, a stroll away from New Orleans. I feel like New Orleans is home.

New Orleans has to learn to live with water rather than in fear of water, and we need a master plan that shows us how to do this. It's so critical that we send a signal to everyone in the country that we're serious about rebuilding New Orleans.

I was born in New Orleans, and I wasn't allowed to go to the movies.

There's nothing like New Orleans. When it comes back, it will be a tremendous highlight for America.

Venice, Italy, survives 365 days out of every year in water; New Orleans can survive a few days of water if it has to.

The biggest challenge in New Orleans has been to find workers who can climb a ladder after lunch.

There have been nine Super Bowls in New Orleans, and not all of them have brought the best of luck to NFL Films. We got robbed twice there, got food poisoning, and my hotel room was broken into on the day the Bears played the Patriots in January 1986.

The way the team and the community embraced us when we first arrived, and the way they continue to do so, even today, shows how deep this connection is. I'm honored to be a part of this organization and so proud to retire as a New Orleans Saint.

I'm born and raised in New York. I've lived between New York and New Orleans for the last 16 to 17 years.

It's a wonderful city and every American has enjoyed New Orleans in one way or the other.

The grand jury, composed of 12 eminent New Orleans citizens, heard our evidence and indicted the defendant for participation in a conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy.

And we live in a French Quarter a lot of the time, in New Orleans. And the camaraderie of everybody there. Everybody takes care of each other.

New Orleans is just a microcosm of Newark and Detroit and hundreds of other troubled urban locales.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor - got her master's with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

Creole is New Orleans city food. Communities were created by the people who wanted to stay and not go back to Spain or France.

A lot of cats in New Orleans, very soulful, very soulful musicians and they assume that they're singers. And they just make that assumption. And so when there's a little intonation problem, people are very forgiving of them because they heard how soulful they play.

I did grow up in New Orleans. I grew up right on the lake, right across the levee.

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. 'Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

The Madden NFL franchise holds a special place in popular culture and the cover is a coveted position for players all over the league. I'm honored to be the first cover athlete chosen by Madden NFL fans and it's a great way to cap off an amazing year for the Saints and the city of New Orleans.

A lot of people don't know I'm from the West Coast. My swag is different. Me being from Young Money, affiliated with them, some people think I'm from down South. They think maybe I'm from New Orleans like them. It's just good to show people and build outside of Young Money, build my brand outside of that.

I have a deep affinity for New Orleans - its like a second home to me - they treat me like I'm their own.

New Orleans, more than many places I know, actually tangibly lives its culture. It's not just a residual of life; it's a part of life. Music is at every major milestone of our life: birth, marriage, death. It's our culture.

For a while I was living in New Orleans for like 4, 5 years. I had just come back to town.

I have held the following jobs: office temp, ticket seller in movie theatre, cook in restaurant, nanny, and phone installer at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.

I started this charity, Fashion for Relief, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina happened. New Orleans was actually the first place I visited in the United States. It was one of my first big jobs, a shoot for British 'Elle.' It was April 14, 1986.

I always wanted to be an actor, but I always loved design, and growing up in New Orleans there was such great style, great architecture. I would decorate my little apartment in New York over and over again, because it only had a couple of rooms. And I did it for friends and family on the side just for fun.

Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book.

I needed New Orleans so badly back in 2006, just somebody to believe in me, somebody to care about me

I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful days. I have a beautiful house here.

New Orleans style is funky - it's just as experimental as the city. There aren't any rules. If you want to wear a polka-dot shirt and some crazy pants, you can get away with it there.

What is interesting in this is the exchange of music that occurred between New Orleans and Cuba, I mean, they had ferries that would go from one port to another.

Chris Paul is one of the brightest stars in the National Basketball Association, a must-see player with the New Orleans Hornets whose deft ball skills and eye-popping speed have attracted admirers all over the world.

My dad loved black singers. So listening to New Orleans music, eventually I wanted to play an instrument.

In the dining room, next to my collection of colorful papier-mache Mardi Gras float art, hang draperies made of the New Orleans toile fabric that I designed pre-Katrina for Hazelnut.

If you're open to it, New Orleans will teach you about yourself, but if you want to hide from who you really are, the city will help you do that, too.

If New Orleans is allowed to die, a crucial part of the world's music heritage will disappear.

New Orleans is a city whose basic industry is the service industry. That's why it makes its money. That's - it brings people to the city. People come to the city and experience the wonders of this extraordinary city and everything else. The question is that, how do we create jobs which are the jobs that have pay, that - living wages?

New Orleans jazz is a complex and embracing art form that began about the same time as the blues and encompassed many of its excellences.

There's no way New Orleans will ever be the city it was. I think it will have half the population. They may create a sort of Disneyland at the French Quarter for tourists. The rest I don't know

New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.

New Orleans. Born and raised. I lived there until I was 19.

I've known Emeril for more than 20 years from when I featured him on 'Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous' from his days at Commander's Palace in New Orleans and from when I helped start the Food Network where he subsequently hosted an amazing 2,000-plus shows.

New Orleans is like the bad-kid island in 'Pinocchio.'

There was this rapper from New Orleans, Mystikal, who when I hear his music, I hear myself. Whenever I wanna get hyped, I put on Mystikal.

Being from North Carolina, it's kind of slow-paced. There's not too much going on there, whereas in New Orleans, there's always something going on. I just love all the people, going out to dinner and enjoying anything I want.

Places I've lived since then had to have some kind of uniqueness and character about them. And logically Key West, and then Down Island. So, all of that stuff sort of had it's roots in New Orleans and went crazy.

You can't vote that water out of the city of New Orleans.

I'd love to live in New Orleans. I love the freedom of it - for good and for bad.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

You look at public education system, charter schools, infrastructure, in so many ways New Orleans has come back stronger.

New Orleans may well have been the most liberal Deep South city in 1954 because of its large Creole population, the influence of the French, and its cosmopolitan atmosphere.

I've always loved New Orleans music. I always loved it when the Neville Brothers opened up for the Grateful Dead and the Dirty Dozen and all that.

In '71 or '72 I returned to New Orleans and stayed there. I started cooking Louisiana food. Of all the things I had cooked, it was the best-and it was my heritage.

The most interesting place I've gone on location was New Orleans

I'm from New Orleans. There's a lot of vampire mystique and mythology that resonates there, and I was fascinated by it. I always wanted to play one.

Watching the scenes out of New Orleans, if you turn down the sound it could be the Sudan or any Third World country. But it's not. it's the United States of America.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

I come to New Orleans so often that, one day soon, someone's going to declare me a native. I love the food. I love the music. I serve on the board of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.

I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans.

You know, for 300 years it's been kind of the same. There are restaurants in New Orleans that the menu hasn't changed in 125 years, so how is one going to change or evolve the food?

New Orleans lives by the water and fights it, a sand castle set on a sponge nine feet below sea level, where people made music from heartache, named their drinks for hurricanes and joked that one day you'd be able to tour the city by gondola.

In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful. ... With the best restaurants in New York, you'll find something similar to it in Paris or Copenhagen or Chicago. But there is no place like New Orleans. So it's a must-see city because there's no explaining it, no describing it. You can't compare it to anything. So, far and away New Orleans.

We closed the restaurant in New Orleans and brought the entire staff to San Francisco. But we had to go home.

It was awesome growing up in New Orleans because there were great metal bands, there were great hardcore bands, there were great thrash metal bands in the middle '80s and what-not. But then, take me out of New Orleans, and I moved to Fort Worth in 1987, and there's a scene there, too. And Texas absolutely has a different sound.

The murder rate in Chicago is skyrocketing, and you see who's doing it and perpetrating it - they all look like Chief Keef. When it comes to the point that, you know, that kids who are doing the killings, and they're kids 13 to 19 years old, and you can replicate that in New Orleans, you can replicate that in Oakland. All the kids look the same.

What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?

I grew up in the South, in New Orleans, where guys torture you all the time. So I didn't really grow up on the self-esteem campaign. When you were lousy at something, they told you you were lousy, and they told you how to fix it.

Honestly, I got the best of both worlds: groove of New Orleans meets the intensity of Texas. That's the best education I could have, the best experiences I could have.

I live in Connecticut, but eventually I'd like to move back to New Orleans. I grew up there; the pace is a bit slower. Plus, I love crawfish and po'boys.

I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.

The rebuilding of New Orleans is an important point in the history of the United States.

I'd like to move back to New Orleans.

Well, my dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years.

It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.

Four months after we finished shooting, I'd been in New Orleans shooting another movie and my agent and I were having a bite to eat - actually in London - and he's sitting there and goes, 'Wow, I just can't believe how ripped you are.'

My office in New York is overflowing with all kinds of cookbooks, and in New Orleans we have a huge culinary library. So yeah, I guess I'm a little bit obsessed.

Well I went to New Orleans to cover the jazz festival for Trio, it's this new arts channel, it's really great.

There is something about New Orleans that embodies passion; I've never seen that before. There's something tangible about the essence of the city. You can taste and smell it.