3
" Perhaps the single most enjoyable part of my researches, which covered a period of about four years, was meeting the artists themselves, the people who provide the luxuries. All of them, from tailors and boot makers to truffle hunters and champagne blenders, were happy in their work, generous with their time, and fascinating about their particular skills. To listen to a knowledgeable enthusiast, whether he's talking about a Panama hat or the delicate business of poaching foie gras in Sauternes, is a revelation, and I often came away wondering why the price wasn't higher for the talent and patience involved. "
― Peter Mayle
5
" Those who have not lived in New Orleans have missed an incredible, glorious, vital city--a place with an energy unlike anywhere else in the world, a majority-African American city where resistance to white supremacy has cultivated and supported a generous, subversive, and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues, and and hip-hop to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funerals, and the citywide tradition of red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and food and traditions and sexuality and liberation. "
― Jordan Flaherty , Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six
7
" 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. "
9
" You're kidding, right?" Shane asked. " You don't need caffeine. You need sleep." He held out the last cup, and Claire realized she'd been wrong; there was someone else in the shadows. Deeper in the shadows even than Oliver had been.Myrnin.He looked completely different to her now, and not just because he wasn't crazy anymore. He'd remembered how to dress himself, for one thing; gone were the costume coats and Mardi Gras beads and flip-flops. He had on a gray knit shirt, black pants, and a jacket that looked a bit out of period, but not as much as before.All clean. He even had shoes on." Yes, you must sleep," he agreed, as he accepted the cup and tried the coffee. " I've gone to far too much trouble to train up another apprentice at this late date. We have work to do, Claire. Good, hard work. Some of it may even earn you accolades, once you leave Morganville." She smiled slowly. " You'll never let me leave." Myrnin's dark eyes fixed on hers. " Maybe I will," he said. " But you must give me at least a few more years, my friend. I have a great deal to learn from you, and I am a very slow learner. "
10
" Leslie-Ann set down her own bucket and watched, marveling, as a quarter of an inch of water covered the bottom.
When she looked away, she saw an older kid. She’d seen him around. But usually he was with Orc and she was too scared of Orc ever to get near him.
She tugged on Howard’s wet sleeve. He seemed not to be sharing in the general glee. His face was severe and sad.
“What?” he asked wearily.
“I know something.”
“Well, goody for you.”
“It’s about Albert.”
Howard sighed. “I heard. He’s dead. Orc’s gone and Albert’s dead and these idiots are partying like it’s Mardi Gras or something.”
“I think he might not be dead,” Leslie-Ann said.
Howard shook his head, angry at being distracted. He walked away. But then he stopped, turned, and walked back to her. “I know you,” he said. “You clean Albert’s house.”
“Yes. I’m Leslie-Ann.”
“What are you telling me about Albert?”
“I saw his eyes open. And he looked at me. "
― Michael Grant , Plague (Gone, #4)
