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

“If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being–ever mindful of its personal style.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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