Quotes About Culture

The past in New Orleans cohabits with the present to an extent not even approximated in any other North American city.

Today I travel a lot, and when I tell people that I live in New Orleans their expression changes slightly; something in their facial muscles relaxes, something brightens in their eyes, and they smile.

their Big Chief, Bo Dollis, would marshal them all together and they would start off down Dryades, with Chief Bo chanting one of the Indian songs accompanied by drums and tambourines, and the whole gang shouting back the antiphonal response.

people of New Orleans spun a culture out of their lives—a music, a cuisine, a sense of life—that has been recognized around the world as a transforming spiritual force.

Nothing in New Orleans starts on time, and this practice was no exception.

Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

Sometimes one gets the feeling that life still thinks it's living in Paris in the '30s.

You knows dat in New Orleans is not morning 'til dee sun come up.

Champagne was discovered by a Catholic monk, said Bernard. Took one swallow and burst out of his cellar yelling, 'I'm drinking stars, I'm drinking stars!' Tequila was invented by a bunch of brooding Indians. Into human sacrifice and pyramids. Somewhere between champagne and tequila is the secret history of Mexico, just as somewhere between beef jerky and Hostess Twinkies is the secret history of America. Or aren't you in the mood for epigrams?

My heart is a Latin American food stall and your love is a health inspector from Zurich.

White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies.

You are an ignorant schoolgirl. You think civilization is a good thing.

Hi. Honey! exclaimed Patsy. Good to hear your voice! Listen, I oughtta go pull my robe on 'fore we commence. You caught me nekkid as a jaybird. 'Nekkid' or 'naked,' mama? What's the blessed difference? Are you making Yankee fun of the way I talk? The way you used to talk? No, no, mama, let me tell you. Naked means you just don't have any clothes on. Nekkid means you don't have any clothes on and you're fixing to get into trouble.

Some families ran their own little version of the Middle East.

Kalbim bir üçüncü dünya ülkesi/Senin aÅŸk?nsa Ä°sviçre'den gelmiÅŸ bir turist

Morality depends on culture. Culture depends on climate.

there are countless ways to live upon this tremendous sphere in mirth and good health, and probably only one way - the industrialized, urbanized, herding way - to live here stupidly, and man has hit upon that one wrong way

Sometimes one gets the idea that life thinks it's still living in Paris in the thirties.

Among the Haida Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the verb for making poetry is the same as the verb to breathe.

What I love most about Jerusalem is that it's not about money." "Pardon?" "New York here is a city about money. L.A.'s about money. Las Vegas is about money. Dallas the same. Tokyo and London, Milan, Zurich, Singapore, the whole reason for them is money. Tel Aviv's about money. But Jerusalem, it's not about money." "He is absolutely right," put in Abu. "Jerusalem is about . . . something else.

Slang just makes people more stupid, that's all

Jerusalem was where it all went down, man. It was connected to heaven like Spanish Harlem was connected to Puerto Rico.

Giant sunflowers, like junkie scarecrows on the nod dozed in one spot with their dry heads dropped upon their breastbones. Their lives extended another day, flies buzzed everything within their range, monotonously eulogizing themselves, like the patriots who persist in praising the glory of a culture long after it is decadent and doomed.

As a result, our big "attic" room was a Hispanic gathering place. Afternoons, it was crowded with boys from Venezuela and Cuba, jabbering away in Spanish, the world's fastest language, seeming to all talk at once. It was like living in a cage full of parrots whose crackers had been laced with crystal meth. I found it agreeably colorful. For whatever reason, Brugál had not