Mark Twain
Writer, Humorist
"An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans."
New Orleans quotes
New Orleans
322 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Naomi Campbell
Model
"I started this charity, Fashion for Relief, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina happened. New Orleans was actually the first place I visited in the United States. It was one of my first big jobs, a shoot for British Elle. It was April 14, 1986."
Tennessee Williams
Playwright
"Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour — but a little bit of eternity dropped in your hands — and who knows what to do with it?"
Jimmy Buffett
Musician, Author
"And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively."
Mark Twain
Writer, Humorist
"New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin."
Explore further
Topics related to New Orleans
Browse quotes that often appear alongside new orleans — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
New Orleans quotes (page 1 of 17)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful. ... With the best restaurants in New York, you'll find something similar to it in Paris or Copenhagen or Chicago. But there is no place like New Orleans. So it's a must-see city because there's no explaining it, no describing it. You can't compare it to anything. So, far and away New Orleans."
Read quote
39 likes
"Four months after we finished shooting, I'd been in New Orleans shooting another movie and my agent and I were having a bite to eat - actually in London - and he's sitting there and goes, 'Wow, I just can't believe how ripped you are.'"
Read quote
38 likes
"America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland."
Read quote
35 likes
"You wanna do some livin' before you die. Do it down in New Orleans."
Read quote
32 likes
"What's New Orleans without music? And what's music without dancing?"
Read quote
29 likes
"It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans."
Read quote
22 likes
"And we live in a French Quarter a lot of the time, in New Orleans. And the camaraderie of everybody there. Everybody takes care of each other."
Read quote
21 likes
"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."
Read quote
20 likes
"I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
Read quote
18 likes
"And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them."
Read quote
17 likes
"New Orleans is like the bad-kid island in 'Pinocchio.'"
Read quote
17 likes
"We wander through old streets, and pause before the age stricken houses; and, strange to say, the magic past lights them up."
Read quote
13 likes
"Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are kept in perfect order. When one goes from the levee or the business streets [of New Orleans] to it, to a cemetery, he observes to himself that if those people down there would live as neatly while they are alive as they do after they are dead, they would find many advantages in it; and besides, their quarter would be the wonder and admiration of the business world."
Read quote
12 likes
"New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size."
Read quote
10 likes
"There is no other place on earth even remotely like New Orleans. Don't even try to compare it to anywhere else."
Read quote
10 likes
"Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art."
Read quote
10 likes
"New Orleans is one of the most exciting, incredible communities in the world. There's such a rich culture and history, and there are innumerable things to do."
Read quote
9 likes
"People from here will often say, "I'm not from the United States, I'm from New Orleans.""
Read quote
8 likes
"In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of the little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar."
Read quote
7 likes
"You can't vote that water out of the city of New Orleans."
Read quote
7 likes