New Orleans is a Louisiana city on the Mississippi River, near the Gulf of Mexico. Nicknamed the “Big Easy,” it’s known for its round-the-clock nightlife, vibrant live-music scene and spicy, singular cuisine reflecting its history as a melting pot of French, African and American cultures. Profoundly inspirational New Orleans quotes will challenge the way you think, and make your life worth living.

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Famous New Orleans Quotes

An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Mark Twain

I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one. John Kennedy Toole

If there was no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom. Chris Rose

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

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

In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home.

It was rich, almost sweet, like the scent of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard. I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume. Anne Rice

New Orleans makes it possible to go to Europe without ever leaving the United States. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin. Mark Twain

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

Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins. John Kennedy Toole

There is no other place on earth even remotely like New Orleans. Don’t even try to compare it to anywhere else. Anthony Bourdain

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio. Lafcadio Hearn

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. Wendell Pierce

Madame Lily Devalier always asked Where are you? in a way that insinuated that there were only two places on earth one could be New Orleans and somewhere ridiculous. Tom Robbins

People don’t live in New Orleans because it is easy. They live here because they are incapable of living anywhere else in just the same way. Ian McNulty

The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds the cemeteries  and they’re a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who’ve died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn’t pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time. Bob Dylan

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

I’m not going to lay down in words the lure of this place. Every great writer in the land, from Faulkner to Twain to Rice to Ford, has tried to do it and fallen short. It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance, and spirit of south Louisiana in words and to try is to roll down a road of clichés, bouncing over beignets and beads and brass bands and it just is what it is. It is home. Chris Rose

I live in New Orleans, because it’s the strangest city in the United States. It has the highest murder rate in the country, the highest incarceration rate, and often we have to boil our drinking water, but there’s nowhere else remotely like it. Nathaniel Rich

Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light. Dave Eggers

New Orleans is like the bad kid island in Pinocchio. Jonah Hill

But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art. Anne Rice

New Orleans is just a doggone fun place to be. Archie Manning

At one point, early on, some public figures even asked whether it ‘made sense’ to rebuild New Orleans. Would you let your own mother die because it didn’t make financial sense to spend the money to treat her, or because you were too busy to spend the time to heal her sick spirit? Tom Piazza

New Orleans is my essence, my soul, my muse. Harry Connick, Jr

You don’t control their minds, ma fifille, you control their hearts. Alys Arden

Even the sidewalks in ‪‎New Orleans had personality. Hunter Murphy

Despite what some people have said, President Bush did not want black people to die in New Orleans. However, he did hope they would not relocate to any areas of Texas that he likes to frequent. Scott Mcclellan

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. Bob Dylan

Mrs. Reilly called in that accent that occurs south of New Jersey only in New Orleans, that Hoboken near the Gulf of Mexico. John Kennedy Toole

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin. Mark Twain

He’s got that New Orleans thing crawling all over him, that good stuff, that We Are the Champions, to hell with the rest and I’ll just start over kind of attitude. Chris Rose

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

Damn. I never should have agreed to this. What is he thinking? Here we are in a piece of crap pickup truck on our way to sit outside of a supermarket to kidnap this girl. Damn. He’d better not be falling for her. Sure she’s cute, but I can’t think about that. Jenna Lynne Duncan

You wanna do some livin’ before you die. Do it down in New Orleans. Dr. John

So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane. Thomas Bailey Aldrich

You knows dat in New Orleans is not morning ’til dee sun come up. Tom Robbins

Could you just imagine? If every suicide rose think of Faulkner’s Quentin Compson as a vampire. I don’t hate the South I don’t I don’t. She wondered how they’d have worked it out in Cambridge when Quentin threw himself off the Andersen bridge into the Charles amid the odor of the honeysuckle, not the beer, sweat, rum, and tainted magnolias of this city, precariously beneath the level of the water. The Compson blood had thinned out; at least this way, he’s restore it after a fashion. Susan Shwartz

You can live in any city in America, but New Orleans is the only city that lives in you. Chris Rose

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. John Kennedy Toole

No matter where in the world you go, New Orleans is always a part of you. Drew Brees

You knows dat in New Orleans is not morning ’til dee sun come up. Tom Robbins

You don’t need a guidebook to see New Orleans  just a good pair of shoes. James Carville

All good New Orleanians go to look at the Mississippi at least once a day. At night it is like creeping into a dark bedroom to look at a sleeping child something of that sort gives you the same warm nice feeling, I mean. Sherwood Anderson

When you go to New Orleans, you’re not just going to a city, you’re going to an entire culture. James Carville

To be engaged in some small way in the revival of one of the great cities of the world is to live a meaningful existence by default. Chris Rose

Surely, if Mother Nature had been consulted, she would never have consented to building a city in New Orleans. Mortimer Zuckerman

That natural disasters are required to provide Americans with a glimpse of reality in their own country is an indication of the deep rot infecting the official political culture. Tariq Ali

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. Isabel Allende

Fidelity is a living, breathing entity. On wobbly footing, it can wander, becoming something different entirely. Kay Goodstadt

I spent so many summers and New Years and fun times in New Orleans. It was always a place where I felt I could go and actually let go and enjoy the spirit of something. Sandra Bullock

She was evil. Couldn’t he, who killed demons with his own hands, realize that? And now I had to run for Mardi Gras Queen because of him. Or her. I didn’t know whose fault it was but there was no way I could back down now. Jenna Lynne Duncan

I took several trips to New Orleans and met with people who had intimate knowledge of the underbelly of the city in the 1950s. The meetings were both fascinating and terrifying. Ruta Sepetys

He was a grim. An unknown. And his aura made me want to be very, very naughty. With him. My desire was so blood burning, throat choking intense that I feared what would be left after that kind of love affair was all over. Juliette Cross

Don’t you just love those long afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands and who knows what to do with it? Tennessee Williams

We may be rivals, Lavinia. But it doesn’t make me want to fuck your brains out any less. Juliette Cross

I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home. It was rich, almost sweet, like the scent of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard. I walked the streets, savoring that long last perfume. Anne Rice

There couldn’t be anything more perfect, she thought, than slow dancing, barefoot, on a balcony in New Orleans, while the rain poured down and twilight wrapped around them. Linda Howard

When a lot of people are calling it a night at 2 AM, New Orleans is coming alive. Mannie Fresh

If nothing else, Alice, you will have sight of one of the grandest buildings in the city, one of the grandest ever built, in fact. That florid thing cost three hundred eighty thousand dollars to erect! It is as ornate as a cathedral. But, oh so mixed up. A bit of everything thrown in Second Empire, Renaissance, Italian, with Corinthian columns, no less. Gold ceiling medallions, frescoes, murals, sculptures even a fountain, where the futures are sold. Well, not in the fountain.” Constance laughed uncertainly. And an ornate steam elevator Well, just don’t bid on the cotton futures. Diane C. McPhail

In other places culture comes down from on high. In New Orleans, it bubbles up from the streets. Ellis Marsalis

Only in New Orleans could you find a siren, a werewolf, and an elf hanging out together in a bar. Sara Reynolds

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

Real love may be a choice, but I plan to choose someone who steals the breath from my body and haunts my very dreams. That is the only kind of love worth having. Renée Ahdieh

New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot planted in its history. Tom Robbins

I was a simple girl. And I honestly didn’t want to debate whether a fallen tree really made a sound in the woods if no one was there to hear it. I’d rather discuss what kind of tree it was and if it held any medicinal properties that could be brewed into a healthful tea. Juliette Cross

In New Orleans, we celebrate everything. It’s probably the only place you’ll see people dancing in a funeral home. Trombone Shorty

New Orleans has a scent of its own that’s strong almost all the time. Magnolia, sweet olive, jasmine, and chicory flavored coffee. I doubt anyone will notice you there. Let me give you something beautiful and tender and delicate and tasty, like what you give me every day now, with your skin. Let me give you New Orleans. Margot Berwin

Everybody here has a story. New Orleans was always a place where people talked too much even if they had nothing to say. Chris Rose

His voice has the texture of an old blues singer. His accent peppered with the quintiscential New Orleans lilt. The way the vowels and words, like point and joint evaporate off the tongue. Replaced by a soft r that turns its language into jazz. The way words like corner walk around the edges of the mouth before slipping off into the wind. Clint Smith

New Orleans life is such a night life. The thing that comes up very often is that our day essentially doesn’t start until midnight or 2 in the morning. Robert Asprin

We forget our dreams, but our nightmares linger with us evermore. Renée Ahdieh

She is a New Orleans girl and New Orleans girls never live anywhere else and even if they do, they always come back. That’s just the way it is. This is where she belongs. End of discussion. Chris Rose

Believe it or not, I didn’t plan to hit a witch with my car today. He shifted the gear stick into first and accelerated down the street. It was on the agenda for tomorrow. Juliette Cross

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