New Orleans, Mon Amour Quotes

“Nostalgia is masochism and masochism is something masochists love to share.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“There is a velvety sensuality here at the mouth of the Mississippi that you won't find anywhere else. Tell me what the air feels like at 3 A.M. on a Thursday night in August in Shaker Heights and I bet you won't be able to say because nobody stays up that late. But in New Orleans, I tell you, it's ink and honey passed through silver moonlight.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“Poetry is again hip in America as people are beginning to refuse to die of boredom and to choke in the fog of their funny money.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“It is a sad fact that all flesh must die, but there is no reason why one's story, as well as one's soul, should be slighted after the passage. The attraction artists feel for our cemeteries is only partly aesthetic; much of it is gossip, a continual whisper intended for the delighted ear. Marble without a story is just marble. A true monument leans over and murmurs in your ear.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“Like Venice, Italy, this is a place of fleeting beauty. The knowledge that we won't be here long gives everyone an intense appetite for living.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“The beauty of Molly's is that it is not, whether in the daytime or at night, the exclusive preserve of an age or income group. Unlike the sterile night scenes of pretentious San Francisco or New York, Molly's (and most other New Orleans bars) welcomes all ages, all colors, and all sexual persuasions, provided they are willing to surrender to the atmosphere.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“As a newcomer I felt that this was indeed a blessed place, capable of unabashedly advertising its flaws, fearing no ridicule and no criticism. That, in essence, is the opposite of provincialism. The great cities of the world are not provincial: They invite complexity, not propaganda.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“When writers come here they walk about smelling everything because New Orleans is, above all, a town where the heady scent of jasmine or sweet olive mingles with the cloying stink of sugar refineries and the musky mud smell of the Mississippi. It's an intoxicating brew of rotting and generating, a feeling of death and life simultaneously occurring and inextricably linked.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“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.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“...Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris, a brilliant reenvisioning of one's own city as an exotic locale. Sue, who was too poor to travel, turned an awed gaze to the familiar and gave his readers a city they would recognize but which hid a poetry far from the familiar.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“Telling a story to go with the meal is de rigueur, cher, it makes the food more memorable, and both meal and story get better when you sip that ice-cold Dixie beer.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“Southern Journey: My Return to the Civil Rights Movement.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“People, not just writers, are attracted to New Orleans because it's full of stories and listeners who love nothing better to do than to listen to them.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City