The Quarter Storm Quotes

“What I wouldn’t stand for was a religion that tried to put itself above all others. Everybody had their gods or goddesses; we may have called them different names, but underneath, they all served the same causes. Meaning, love, redemption. And I, for one, didn’t think that one group had any leg up on another. My practice was mine and always would be, but if praying to a merman from the lost city of Atlantis gets you through the day without the need to hurt or demean or rule over someone else, then I’d say go for it.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“Human beings reserved their most potent venom for the ones we love.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“While some folks wouldn’t understand, in our neighborhood we knew what the foster care system did to a child.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“To me, anger was like a dragon. It sat alongside the good and moral part of you. It was the balance, you see. You wouldn’t want to kill the dragon. You’d want to tame it. The fire could be useful in certain situations. When you needed to stand up for yourself. When you needed to stand up for someone else.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“The last thing any intelligent, sensible Black person wanted to do was to voluntarily go to a police station. Only under two circumstances were we normally forced to circumvent this reality: if we were arrested, justly or unjustly so, or if we were lucky enough to be picking up released friends or family.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“With my client banished to the far-eastern corner of his home with directions to kneel and recite ten rosaries (five more than was strictly called for, but I didn’t like him and I could be petty), I got to work.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“We’d survived other storms. New Orleans sat below sea level; such things were expected. And to continue to call this city home, most of us were willing to pay the price ten times over. It had a soul that couldn’t be found in any other part of the country. We wouldn’t give that up without a fight.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“Yes, ma’am.” Sophie was raised by someone who valued manners. You could call me a cynic, but people I met for the first time started out with a negative balance. They earned their way onto the positive side based on their actions. Little Sophie had earned a plus one.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“In my experience, the thing that Black people had to contend with, often in a split second, was whether the person you were dealing with was giving you attitude because they were a racist or because they were just an asshole.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“The mind could conjure all kinds of fanciful scenarios to assuage the guilt of a poor choice of last words.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“Roman had questioned why women even carried purses. Only a man who hadn’t struggled daily with where to put his keys and wallet, phone, and notebook would ask something so ridiculous.”
― Veronica G. Henry, The Quarter Storm

“To me, anger was like a dragon. It sat alongside the good and moral part of you. It was the balance, you see. You wouldn’t want to kill the dragon. You’d want to tame it. The fire could be useful in certain situations. When you needed to stand up for yourself.”
― Veronica G. Henry, The Quarter Storm

“Religion had long been twisted and manipulated to suit whoever was in charge at the moment.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“What I wouldn’t stand for was a religion that tried to put itself above all others. Everybody had their gods or goddesses; we may have called them different names, but underneath, they all served the same causes. Meaning, love, redemption.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“didn’t go through the polite formality of offering Chicken money. I didn’t have it to give, and even if I did, he wouldn’t take it. It was one of the things tourists to New Orleans sensed but never quite understood. Like in Haiti: once you were accepted as part of the community, you were family. And family was there for the good times and bad.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“A moment later, the phone was properly positioned, and my father smiled the smile of someone continuously amazed at the little twenty-first-century gifts I gave him.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“Of course there’d been whispers. At the Lemon Drop, barbershops and beauty salons, backyard barbecues. Sanctuaries of Black truth. Murmurs and speculation about innocent people gunned or beaten down for the crime of not dying with the first devastating waves.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“People had scrambled onto rooftops, crowded into attics. Far too many drowned. Pillaging and violence ensued. For some it was sport, but for most, it had been their only means of survival. The NOPD, in their haste to restore order, had set about finishing off the job of the real estate investors who had been plotting for decades. Got rid of people in certain neighborhoods.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“Some people would call what I’d just done social engineering. I called it good old-fashioned common sense. I was getting good at this whole detective thing.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“But right now, I wanted my mother. And I realized that, at least in part, her disappearance drove me. If I couldn’t solve her mystery, I’d solve someone else’s.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“The police were a fixture at public ceremonies—really anyplace where Black folks were out in numbers greater than two—but detectives, particularly Roman and Darby, were not.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm

“Trombone Shorty’s “Hurricane Season” filled every corner of the room, and I found myself bobbing my head along with the beat. This song embodied New Orleans; if you didn’t get that, you did not, absolutely could not, fathom this city.”
― Veronica Henry, The Quarter Storm