French Quarter Quotes

You can take the people out of the city, but you can't take the soul - that remains here. ~ T.J. Fisher

Even the sidewalks in ‪New Orleans‬ had personality. ~ Hunter Murphy

I think New Orleans is such a beautiful city. It looks like a fairytale when you walk through the French Quarter or the Garden District. There is such a lush sense of color, style, architecture - and the people themselves. ~ Anika Noni Rose

Toulouse Street ran one way toward the Mississippi River. Jackson looked over [Imogene's] head into one of those famous New Orleans courtyards, full of lush foliage, mossy brick, secrets, and wonder. ~ Hunter Murphy

My experience of coming out was very much centered around the bar scene. And what happened for me is that when I turned 18 and was old enough to get into certain gay bars in the French Quarter, I became a regular customer. ~ Christopher Rice

You like rock?
Little boy, I'm not your friend. I'm not your Dark-Hunter and I'm not your friggin' date. You only speak to me when I ask you a question. Otherwise you keep your mouth shut, your eyes off me, and you might live long enough to get me to the French Quarter. (Zarek) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The millions of vacationers who came here every year before Katrina were mostly unaware of this poverty. French Quarter tourists were rarely exposed to the reality beneath the Disneyland Gomorrah that is projected as 'N'Awlins,' a phrasing I have never heard a local use and a place, as far as I can tell, that I have never encountered despite my years in the city. The seemingly average, white, middle-class Americans whooped it up on Bourbon Street without any thought of the third-world lives of so many of the city's citizens that existed under their noses. The husband and wife, clad in khaki shorts, feather boa, and Mardi Gras beads well out of season, beheld a child tap-dancing on the street for money and clapped along to his beat without considering the obvious fact that this was an early school-day afternoon and that the child should be learning to read, not dancing for money. Somehow they did not see their own child beneath the dancer's black visage. Nor, perhaps, did they see the crumbling buildings where the city's poor live as they traveled by cab from the French Quarter to Commander's Palace. They were on vacation and this was not their problem. ~ Billy Sothern

The only way he could truly stick out in New Orleans was if he were walking down the street on fire. ~ Hunter Murphy

Are you gay, Cherie?
Me, No… I'm not anything… I-I mean I prefer not to indulge, I stammered.
"Really... how do you mean?"
Well love has been an elusive story, like a fairytale adults tell children but I have never known any of it to be true. In reality it reminds me of religion. I am not sure God is real either, if God is real why do so many innocents suffer?
Innocents suffer because it is their destiny to suffer.
What? What does that mean?" I'm annoyed.
God has nothing to do with it. We are born into this world to experience all that is not God-like, so we can then be inspired to reach for higher spiritual goals.
I have never thought of it that way before. If that is so then I must be preparing for sainthood. Am I to think that all of my suffering as a child has been to prepare me for greatness? ~ Darwun St. James

I don't think there's a back lot here in Hollywood anymore that has those streets, like a French Quarter. ~ Glenn Danzig

Okay. Well, firstly, Marcel is not my mortal enemy - he is my friend, albeit one who is unaware that I'm trying to sabotage his hold over the supernatural community of the French Quarter, but a friend nonetheless. And secondly, I daggered Elijah in order to gain Marcel's trust. If I had known he would place my brother in the hands of a particularly nasty teenaged witch, I certainly would have weighed my options a bit differently. And thirdly, sister, please. ~ Klaus Mikaelson

When you set a play in the French Quarter in New Orleans, it's hard not to acknowledge the whole African-American, French, white mixing of races. That's what the French Quarter is: it's a Creole community. ~ Nicole Ari Parker

Gregori stared with dismay at the small, two-story house enclosed in wrought-iron latticework and sandwiched between two smaller, rather rundown properties in the crowded French Quarter of New Orleans. He inserted the key in the lock and turned to look at Savannah's face. It was lit up with expectation, her blue eyes shining.
"I have definitely lost all good sense," he muttered as he pushed open the door.
The interior was dark, but he could see everything easily. The room was layered with dust, old sheets covered the furniture, and the wallpaper was peeling in small curls from the walls.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Savannah flung out her hands and turned in a circle. Jumping into Gregori's arms, she hugged him tightly. "It's so perfect!"
He couldn't help himself; he kissed her inviting mouth. "Perfect for torching. Savannah,did you even look at this place before you bought it?"
She laughed and ruffled his thick mane of hair. "Don't be such a pessimist. Can't you see its potential?"
"It is a firetrap," he groused. ~ Christine Feehan

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. ~ Hunter Murphy

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. ~ Hunter Murphy

Haley paused. "Occupation?" "Psychiatrist at Universal Hospital." Haley stopped typing and stared. Dr. Tonya Preston stared right back. "You're looking at me like I said I was a hooker in the French Quarter. ~ K.D. Williamson

There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. ~ Boris Vian

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... ~ Hunter Murphy

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. ~ Gary Krist

Ever since I first visited New Orleans back in '89, I've been intrigued by the French Quarter. I always wanted to set something in the Quarter, whether it was historic or contemporary. Unfortunately, I was always tied up with previous commitments - earlier multiple contracts - and could not get a crack at it. ~ Robert Asprin

In until ten, not even on Mardi Gras nights. No one except the girl in the black silk dress, the thin little girl with the short, soft dark hair that fell in a curtain across her eyes. Christian always wanted to brush it away from her face, to feel it trickle through his fingers like rain. Tonight, as usual, she slipped in at nine-thirty and looked around for the friends who were never there. The wind blew the French Quarter in behind her, the night air rippling warm down Chartres Street as it slipped away toward the river, smelling of spice and fried oysters and whiskey and the dust of ancient bones stolen and violated. ~ Poppy Z. Brite

She doesn't have to work to blend in because in the French Quarter, all you have to do to blend in is dance with the chaos. ~ Christopher Rice

New Orleans, it was often observed, was the first American metropolis to build an opera house, but the last to build a sewage system. ~ Gary Krist

I was a French Quarter rat from the moment I could get on a bus by myself and go to the French Quarter. I played music most of my early life and it just seemed that to entertain people was a really good thing to do. ~ John Larroquette

Ever since I could remember reading, I was a fan of Horror Novels, then just an Avid reader of all things dark and deeply written or off the cuff styles and not so bland and sterile as if the grammar police forensically wrote it to be safe, then re-edited it to be even more annoyingly not from an emotion but from a text book, I love dark dark fiction that's why i write it. Some of my favorite writers are Anne Rice, Hunter S. Thompson and Clive Barker, perhaps you can sense this in my writing. ~ Liesalette

New Orleans, said he usually dresses in costume for the Mardi Gras holiday, but the weather deterred him this year. Baker said he chose to celebrate a little differently - sipping cocktails under the cover of a friend's French Quarter patio balcony while watching other costumed revelers ~ Anonymous

Sometimes, the choices we make have devastating consequences ~ Jeanette Vaughan

The morning sun in New Orleans felt like it was trying to make a point, convincing the old world to believe something new. ~ Hunter Murphy

It seemed some pulp-novel version of a European hub, equal parts Renaissance-age Florence and modern day Paris with a heavy helping of Las Vegas and New York - at least, that was the way she thought of it. It was so far beyond description and unrelatable to any other place that she grasped desperately at straws trying to puzzle out how she'd tell the tale she'd no doubt live tonight. ~ Alaria Thorne

I'm mesmerized by the way he speaks - New Orleans is pronounced N'awlins. When he says backyard, it's backyaaad. It's the kind of voice that makes you feel instantly at home, like you're a close friend or part of the inner circle.
- SINGLE-MINDED ~ Lisa Daily

As a rule, I try to avoid the French Quarter because of the crowds, especially Bourbon Street. But hey, some people love it. A great, wild, adult thing to see is the costume competition in front of the bar Oz on Bourbon early morning on Fat Tuesday. ~ Bryan Batt

We hit every jazz and blues club on and off Bourbon Street, dancing and drinking until we girls were drunk enough to go with the boys to the strip clubs which outnumbered all other businesses in the French Quarter. Here is where my solution unfolded. ~ Darwun St. James

I don't ever want to stop learning. And I really want to learn French fluently. It would be great to go and live in France. ~ Alexa Chung

Our country itself was cursed, bastardized, partitioned into north and south, and if it could be said of us that we chose division and death in our uncivil war, that was also only partially true. We had not chosen to be debased by the French, to be divided by them into an unholy trinity of north, center, and south, and to be turned over to the great powers of capitalism and communism for a further bisection, then given roles as the clashing armies of a Cold War chess match played in air-conditioned rooms by white men wearing suits and lies. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny resources to disfavored or hostile regimes. ~ Elliott Abrams

When Pope Francis touched down on French soil for the first time in his papacy with a visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg last November, Ms. Royal was the senior French official there to greet him. ~ Elaine Sciolino

You need mystery. You actually do. I think that's what foreign women, French women in particular, are good at. There's still a sense that you need to keep some of the unknown because that's where the soul resides, or something. ~ Jason Clarke

Wine to me is passion. It's family and friends. It's warmth of heart and generosity of spirit. ~ Robert Mondavi

The boy, Max Rüst, will later on become a tinker, father of seven more Rüsts, he will go to work for the firm of Hallis & Co., Plumbing and Roofing, in Grünau. At the age of 52 he will win a quarter of a prize in the Prussian Class Lottery, then he will retire from business and die during an adjustment suit which he has started against the firm of Hallis & Co., at the age of 55. His obituary will read as follows: On September, suddenly, from heart-disease, my beloved husband, our dear father, son, brother, brother-in-law, and uncle, Paul Rüst, in his 55th year. This announcement is made with deep grief on behalf of his sorrowing family by Marie Rüst. The notice of thanks after the funeral will read as follows: Acknowledgment. Being unable to acknowledge individually all tokens of sympathy in our bereavement, we hereby express our profound gratitude to all relatives, friends, as well as to the tenants of No. 4 Kleiststrasse and to all our acquaintances. Especially do we thank Herr Deinen for his kind words of sympathy. At present his Max Rüst is 14 years old, has just finished public school, is supposed to call by on his way there at the clinic for the defective in speech, the hard of hearing, the weak-visioned, the weak-minded, the in-corrigible, he has been there at frequent intervals, because he stutters, but he is getting better now. ~ Alfred Doblin

In most parts of the world people eat because they will die if they don't. The French, in contrast, live to eat. Many people take little or no pleasure from the food they consume. The French extract every possible pleasure from eating. ~ Vernon Coleman

Because I cannot flatter and look fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
I must be held a rancorous enemy. ~ William Shakespeare

Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day - the description was, 'Never shot. Dropped once. ~ Roy Blunt

An older witch once told me about this French saying – vous tombez bien."
"What does that mean?" Alec asked.
"You've fallen well. ~ Lisa Carlisle

You're as strong as the Pont Neuf. You'll live to bury us all! ~ Marcel Proust

Dear Diary:
I have a confession to make: I've become a total idiot over French pastries.
They're my new favorite food.
My new-found edible souvenir.
My new favorite sin.
Dunkin Donuts is so yesterday. ~ Kimberley Montpetit

I'm going to go fishing next summer. And I'm going to try French fries dipped in ice cream. And, when I have s'mores, I'll make an extra one for you. When I hear our favourite songs, I'll dance for you. I'll do anything for you. I'll do it all for you. ~ Lisa De Jong

Dreams, always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate is the soul, the more its dreams bear it away from possibility. Each man carries in himself his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed. From birth to death, how many hours can we count that are filled by positive enjoyment, by successful and decisive action? Shall we ever live, shall we ever pass into this picture which my soul has painted, this picture which resembles you?

These treasures, this furniture, this luxury, this order, these perfumes, these miraculous flowers, they are you. Still you, these mighty rivers and these calm canals! These enormous ships that ride upon them, freighted with wealth, whence rise the monotonous songs of their handling: these are my thoughts that sleep or that roll upon your breast. You lead them softly towards that sea which is the Infinite; ever reflecting the depths of heaven in the limpidity of your fair soul; and when, tired by the ocean's swell and gorged with the treasures of the East, they return to their port of departure, these are still my thoughts enriched which return from the Infinite - towards you. ~ Charles Baudelaire

The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to, and in tension with, both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer's expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister's claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely what interests the public? ~ Timothy Garton Ash

Nobody went to bed at seven in Paris, even French children. Les enfants stayed up late at night, he had heard, eating with the adults, sipping red wine, and discussing the latest books and films. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Yet despite its current usage, the @ is not a product of the digital age, and may be almost as old as the ampersand. It had been associated with trade for many centuries, known as an *amphora* or jar, a unit of measurement. Most countries have their own term for it, often linked to food (in Hebrew it is *shtrudl*, meaning strudel, in Czech it is *zavinac* or rollmop herring) or to cute animals (*Affenschwanz* or monkey's tail in German, *snabel-a* meaning "the letter a, with a trunk," in Danish, *sobaka* or dog in Russian,), or both (*escargot* in French). ~ Simon Garfield

The scientific and societal achievements of the modern age are undisputable. But after the French Revolution, modernity increasingly emancipated itself from Christian roots, thereby becoming rootless itself. ~ Walter Kasper

What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced. ~ Thomas Paine

When you have a transportation system that the price of propellant is essentially negligible something is very wrong. If you look at any other transportation system, a car, a motorcycle, a train, an oil tanker, an airliner, you name it; about a quarter to a third of the operating cost is buying the propellant. ~ Burt Rutan

Forte is French ... for blanket fort. ~ Buddy Wakefield

The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens - finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

When I stepped into the brown-tiled entryway of the Kentwood Public Library, the sunlight flowing down on me from the high windows, I felt a sense of importance. It gratified me to be in a place devoted to books and quiet; I was filled with a sense of hope. Reading to me was fundamental, as fundamental as food. And nothing could be more satisfying than reading a good book while eating a good meal of mi soup, french fries, and a thin cut of steak. I plowed through books as fast as possible in order to read them again. ~ Bich Minh Nguyen

When I had a kid and I went through my drama and situation, I respected my father more because it kinda made me understand what he went through with me. ~ French Montana

French sought reforms before liberties ... They hate, not certain specific privileges, but all distinctions of classes; they would insist upon equality of rights in the midst of slavery. They respect neither contracts nor private rights; indeed, they hardly recognize individual rights at all in their absorbing devotion to the public good ... They conceived all the social and administrative reforms effected by the Revolution before the idea of free institutions had once flashed upon their mind ... Most of them were strongly opposed to deliberative assemblies, to local and subordinate authorities, and to the various checks which have been established from time to time in free countries to counterbalance the supreme government ... French nation is prepared to tolerate in a government, that favors and flatters its desire for equality, practices and principles that are, in fact, the tools of despotism. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Every little thing makes a difference, whether you decide it yourself or whether it's pure accident. So many people have had the whole course of their lives changed by something perfectly simple like, let's say, crossing the street at one point instead of another."
"Yes, yes, yes, I know," Stenham said with exaggerated weariness. "As far as I'm concerned that's just as boring, and a lot more false, by the way. The point I'm trying to make is that he loves his world of Koranic law because it's his, and at the same time he hates it because his intuition tells him it's at the end of its rope. He can't expect anything more from it. And our world, he hates that too, just on general principles, and yet it's his only hope, the only way out - if there is one for him personally, which I doubt. ~ Paul Bowles

By giving full expression to the contradiction between civil society and the state, the French Revolution radically transformed both its terms. To put it differently: dualism was not abolished but, rather, displaced within the space delimited by the two poles of the contradiction. This created a new split between 'man', a member of civil society, and the 'citizen', a member of the state. It is only by 'abstracting' from his condition as man and his insertion into the organization of civil society that the political subject can become a citizen and make his entry into the political community: it is only as a 'sheer, blank individual' who accepts the fact that the political is divorced from the social that he can take part in the life of the state, which is based on the freedom and equality of its citizens.
(...)
The political state is 'abstract' in the sense suggested by the etymology of the word; it appears as the residue or the 'precipitate' of the constitutive movement by means of which civil society transcends its own limits to attain political existence, while leaving its internal differences intact, or, rather, transforming them into mere 'differences of social life' 'without significance in political life'.
The state is incapable of substantially affecting the contents of civil society, for it is, precisely, a product of civil society's abstraction from itself. ~ Stathis Kouvelakis

It made me comfortable. It was a house where you could put your feet up and drink French champagne or Ballarat Bitter according to your mood. ~ Peter Carey

My dad was never one of those dads you could ask for a quarter if you saw a gumball machine. Instead he had one of those black American Express cards not available to general public. Gumball machines didn't have slots for those. ~ S.A. Bodeen

The policemen agreed they were living with a most peculiar fellow. One moment he was reading classical literature in the original French and quoting Tennyson, and the next he would be discussing the best way to blow up a train. ~ Ben Macintyre

You can knock down a genuine belief, if you load up with enough facts that contradict it; but a belief that's built on nothing except who the person wants to be, nothing can crumble that. ~ Tana French

But no one leaves. - Let us set out once more on our native roads, burdened with my vice, that vice that since the age of reason has driven roots of suffering into my side - that towers to heaven, beats me, hurls me down, drags me on.

Ultimate innocence, final timidity. All's said. Carry no more my loathing and treacheries before the world.

Come on! Marching, burdens, the desert, boredom and anger.

Hire myself to whom? What beasts adore? What sacred images destroy? What hearts shall I break? What lie maintain? - Through what blood wade?

Better to keep away from justice. - A hard life, outright stupor, - with a dried-out fist to lift the coffin lid, lie down, and suffocate. No old age this way, no danger: terror is very un-French.

- Ah! I am so forsaken I will offer at any shrine impulses toward perfection.

Oh my self-denial, my marvelous Charity! my Selfless love! And still here below!

De Profundis Domine, what an ass I am! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

a Quarter Quell. They occur every twenty-five years, marking the anniversary of the districts' defeat with over-the-top celebrations and, for extra fun, some miserable twist for the tributes. I've ~ Suzanne Collins

Thick and creamy egg, fragrant roast quail... and the rice! It all makes such a hearty, satisfying combination!
Wait, something just crunched?
"See, there are five parts to a good chicken-and-egg rice bowl.
Chicken... eggs... rice... onions... and warishita.
*Warishita is a sauce made from a combination of broth, soy sauce and sugar.*
"I seared the quail in oil before putting it in the oven to roast. That made the skin nice and crispy... while leaving the meat inside tender and juicy.
For the eggs, I seasoned them with salt and a generous pinch of black pepper to give them some bite and then added cream to make them thick and creamy! It's the creaminess of the soft-boiled egg that makes or breaks a good chicken-and-egg bowl, y'know.
Some milk made the risotto extra creamy. I then mixed in onions as well as ground chicken that was browned in butter. I used the Suer technique on the onions. That should have given some body to their natural sweetness.
For the sauce, I sweetened some Madeira wine with sugar and honey and then added a dash of soy sauce. Like warishita in a regular chicken-and-egg rice bowl, this sauce ties all the parts of the dish together. Try it with the poached egg. It's seriously delicious!
Basically I took the idea of a Japanese chicken-and-egg rice bowl...
... and rebuilt it using only French techniques!"
"Yukihira! I wanna try it too!"
"Oh, uh, sorry. I only made that one."
"Awww!
You ~ Yuto Tsukuda

They tell a story, probably not true, about a cap trooper who was sight-seeing in Paris. He visited Les Invalides, looked down at Napoleon's coffin, and said to a French guard there: "Who's he?"
The Frenchman was properly scandalized. "Monsieur does not know? This is the tomb of Napoleon! Napoleon Bonaparte! The greatest soldier who ever lived!"
The cap trooper thought about it. Then he asked, "So? Where were his drops? ~ Robert A. Heinlein