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“Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.”
― James Lee Burke, Pegasus Descending

“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican party policy since May 2008. With gas prices soaring to unprecedented heights, that's when the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan 'Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less'—with an emphasis on the now. The wildly popular campaign was a cry against caution, against study, against measured action. In Gingrich's telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might be—locked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshore—was a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once. In the face of this triple win, caring about the environment was for sissies: as senator Mitch McConnell put it, 'in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas, they think oil rigs are pretty'. By the time the infamous 'Drill Baby Drill' Republican national convention rolled around, the party base was in such a frenzy for US-made fossil fuels, they would have bored under the convention floor if someone had brought a big enough drill.”
― Naomi Klein

“She doesn’t even have shoes onâ€� He was trying to reconcile something in his head while talking to Luke.
“In all the time you spent in that shack, you forgot to pack her shoes?â€� Luke asked rhetorically, shaking his head in both wonder and disappointment. “Look, we’re in the boonies. I am sure shoes are optional, as are a full set of teeth.”
― Jenna-Lynne Duncan, Hurricane

“This is Louisiana, we don't have basements because of the water level.”
― Leah Rae Miller, The Summer I Became a Nerd

“From my friend, Brig. General Ezell Ware, Jr., CA Nat'l Guard, Dec.

Keep on going till you get there, then keep going.”
― Tracey Richardson, Florestine

“I always find it curious to discover a home left as if in a state of interrupted daily life, with clothes still hanging like flaccid skins in a closet. Despite the rubble of personal effects, I can imagine someone sitting in their favorite chair, smoking an evening cigarette, or tinkering on their best friend’s truck in the garage.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“Abandoned residential homes are common in the area—often the casualties of severe damage from hurricanes—but what I find fascinating is the mettle of the Cajuns we encountered and befriended. They may lose their roof and be forced to abandon their home, but it is a near surety that they will remain in the same area, raising a family. There is great cultural pride in these resourceful people, and it is evidenced by the tenacity of those who face the power of Gulf hurricanes every year, and yet remain.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“When you first step from your comfort bubble into a new environment, all the sensory details are acutely apparent: the guttural sound of the toads, what locals call the Ouaouarons (pronounced “wa-wa-ronsâ€�), the crooning of some foreign night bird deep in a jungle of pine, palmetto, and cypress, the sweet scent of night-blooming flowers mixing with the loamy, earthen banks of the bayou, Spanish Moss draped like early Halloween decorations on the sagging arms of tree-giants, and the feel of thick, wet air filling your head and chest.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“We came to discover a world rich with culture, history, and bayous. This flat swampy territory is riddled with waterways, snaking like veins and arteries between forests filled with crooked cypress trees. Sulphur is home to a Cajun populace, and unlike its more well-known southeastern counterpart, New Orleans, which is predominantly Creole, it was originally settled by Acadians.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“Everything in Louisiana is flat, so I found myself lost in the expanse of crawfish fields, telephone lines, rice silos, and lonesome rural homes, and my ability to judge distance became compromised. Nevertheless, it seemed a long, bouncy ride on dirt roads before we arrived at Ardoin (pronounced “ard-wahnâ€�) Cove Cemetery, the rumbling truck engine often stirring pink-tinged Egrets from the roadside slews.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“The wet floor was difficult to navigate and the musty smell of rot, tinged with ammonia, was sharp in my nose. It was evident that the building’s current occupants were engaged in questionable activities, so while I wanted to explore and capture the dark beauty of this forgotten place, I did not care to stumble upon anyone living or deceased.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“There is a sense of danger in these places too, and the evidence of vandalism, vagrancy, and drug abuse often heralds the reminder that you are at risk. Indeed, danger can be attractive as well.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“The electric hum of cicadas, which was a low drone near the road, become an overwhelming vibration in the neck-deep brush that had taken back what was once a long driveway and front yard. By the time I reached the structure, beads of sweat were rolling off my lips and the tip of my nose, and my skin was covered in the slick of Louisiana humidity.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“The faded lime-colored building was, like so many other residential locations in the area, a snapshot out of time, as if the occupant had simply walked away one day. Blooms of mold seemed strung together by webs lacing the exterior—constellations marked by Mud dauber high-rises and sticky spider holes.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“Every day is an opportunity to be kinder, gentler, more loving, and more tolerant.

Small kindnesses make big ripples in the pond of life.”
― M. G. Faust, Blood Under the Oaks

“Every soldier who fought put on a uniform and gave up two, three, four years of his life. He worked, he fought, sometimes he bled. Sometimes he lost a limb-but above all, he gave America those years of his life. And America said, "We won't forget you." That's simple justice. Now they're back. Most veterans are bitter men because the simple things they ask-a home, a job, security-they cannot have. But what, I ask, is it like to be a Negro veteran?
You fought, if you are a Negro veteran, to tear down the sign "No Jews Allowed" in Germany, to find in America the sign "No Negroes Allowed." You fought to wipe out the noose and the whip in Germany and Japan, to find the noose and the whip in Georgia and Louisiana.”
― Oliver W. Harrington, Why I Left America and Other Essays

“The forest was dense, and filled with all manner of vines and rank undergrowth; the road was a vague opening, where obstructing trees had been felled, the stumps and rotten trunks remaining. Across actual quags a track of logs and saplings had been laid, but long ago, now rotten and in broken patches. As far as the eye could reach, muddy water, sent back by a south wind from the gulf, extended over the vast flat before us, to a depth of from two to six feet, as per immediate personal measurement. We spurred in.
One foot:
Two feet, with hard bottom:
Belly-deep, hard bottom:
Shoulder-deep, soft bottom:
Shoulder-deep, with a sucking mire:

The same, with a network of roots, in which a part of the legs are entangled, while the rest are plunging. The same, with a middle ground of loose poles; a rotten log, on which we rise dripping, to slip forward next moment, head under, haunches in air. It is evident we have reached one of the spots it would have been better to avoid.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

“The horses, reluctant and excited from the first, become furious and wild. At the next shoal-personal nastiness being past consideration-we dismount, at knee-deep, to give them a moment's rest, shifting the mule's saddle to the trembling long-legged mare, and turning Mr. Brown loose, to follow as he could. After a breathing-spell we resume our splashed seats and the line of wade. Experience has taught us something, and we are more shrewd in choice of footing, the slopes around large trees being attractively high ground, until, by a stumble on a covered root, a knee is nearly crushed against a cypress trunk. Gullies now commence, cut by the rapid course of waters flowing off before north winds, in which it is good luck to escape instant drowning. Then quag again; the pony bogs; the mare, quivering and unmanageable, jumps sidelong among loose corduroy; and here are two riders standing waist-deep in mud and water between two frantic, plunging-horses, fortunately not beneath them. Nack soon extricates himself, and joins the mule, looking on terrified from behind. Fanny, delirious, believes all her legs broken and strewn about her, and falls, with a whining snort, upon her side. With incessant struggles she makes herself a mud bath, in which, with blood-shot eyes, she furiously rotates, striking, now and then, some stump, against which she rises only to fall upon the other side, or upon her back, until her powers are exhausted, and her head sinks beneath the surface. Mingled with our uppermost sympathy are thoughts of the soaked note-books, and other contents of the saddle-bags, and of the.hundred dollars that drown with her. What of dense soil there was beneath her is now stirred to porridge, and it is a dangerous exploit to approach. But, with joint hands, we length succeed in grappling her bridle, and then in hauling her nostrils above water. She revives only for a new tumult of dizzy pawing, before which we hastily retreat. At a second pause her lariat is secured, and the saddle cut adrift. For a half-hour the alternate resuscitation continues, until we are able to drag the head of the poor beast, half strangled by the rope, as well as the mud and water, toward firmer ground, where she recovers slowly her senses and her footing. Any further attempts at crossing the somewhat "wet" Neches bottoms are, of course, abandoned, and even the return to the ferry is a serious sort of joke. However, we congratulate ourselves that we are leaving, not entering the State.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

“As for Judy, the terrier, the wet country had proved for her a great relief. Her ulcerated paws had been carefully covered with moccasins, and, from the beginning of the marshy country, daily improved, until she was able to accomplish the rare canine feat of over two thousand miles of steady travel. A day's pause was now to the tired creature a priceless boon, spent in a rest that was no less than intense. Selecting the quietest nook, she would coil herself with great deliberation, and for hour after hour not so much as move a muscle; immersed in a terrier's sleep, the tip of an eyelid never unlifted. I shall not soon forget her appearance in the Neches bottom. She was very averse-being anything but a water-dog-to enter at all; but seeing herself abandoned, as we waded away, jumped, with a yelp, into the water, and swam for the nearest stump; and so followed, alternately submerged in silence and mounted, with a series of dripping howls, upon these rotten pedestals.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

“The hot, soggy breath of the approaching summer was extremely depressing”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

“Louisianians are sacrificial lambs to the entire American industrial system.”
― Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

“Even though she claimed it was safe, New Orleans was no place for a pretty woman to walk about unescorted.”
― Grace Hitchcock, Hearts of Gold Collection

“My culture is no better than anybody else's culture. My people were no better than anybody else. And yet I will not accept it as a second-class culture. It's my culture. It's the best culture for me. Now, I would expect if you have a different culture, that you would feel the same about yours as I feel about mine.”
― Dewey Balfa

“But that’s Louisiana, lots of crazy Cajun stuff goes on over there. Who knows what they’re doing in those swamps!”
― Amy Weinland Daughters, You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened

“This dark, plain room which, like so many things in La Louisiane, is only a shadow of what it wants to become.”
― Julia Malye, Pelican Girls

“You can only afford so much grief in La Louisiane, that much Genevieve has learned by now.”
― Julia Malye, Pelican Girls

“Like a clown car, they excitedly filed into a single line and followed the server straight into the bustling lunch crowd at Crawfish & Beignets. It was the siblings' neutral zone, a place where no fighting was allowed.
Except this time felt more like the Last Supper.
Seafood boils were a staple of their childhood, reminding them of all the best parts of being Vietnamese American in the South, and none of the bad. Though unspoken, the migration of the Viet-Cajun boil always lingered over them, reminding them of its roots in Louisiana, from other Vietnamese folks who resettled in Houston after Hurricane Katrina, and the resiliency that came with it.”
― Carolyn Huynh, The Family Recipe: A Novel

“A roar of relief and belts of glee united the siblings. They rushed past the other Trầns, gloating. Like a clown car, they excitedly filed into a single line and followed the server straight into the bustling lunch crowd at Crawfish & Beignets. It was the siblings' neutral zone, a place where no fighting was allowed.
Except this time felt more like the Last Supper.
Seafood boils were a staple of their childhood, reminding them of all the best parts of being Vietnamese American in the South, and none of the bad. Though unspoken, the migration of the Viet-Cajun boil always lingered over them, reminding them of its roots in Louisiana, from other Vietnamese folks who resettled in Houston after Hurricane Katrina, and the resiliency that came with it.”
― Carolyn Huynh, The Family Recipe