Do what you do. This Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve, Twelfth Night, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, St. Paddy's Day, and every day henceforth. Just do what you do. Live out your life and your traditions on your own terms. If it offends others, so be it. That's their problem.

Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once.

When I am introduced as someone from New Orleans, people sometimes say: "I'm so sorry." New Orleans. I'm so sorry. That's not the way it was before,not the way it's supposed to be. When people find out you're from New Orleans, they're supposed to tell you about how they got drunk there once, or fell in love there, or first heard the music there that changed their lives. At worst people would say: "I've always wanted to go there." But now, it's just: "I'm sorry." Man, that kills me. That just kills me.

To be engaged in some small way in the revival of one of the great cities of the world is to live a meaningful existence by default.

we dance even if there's no radio. we drink at funerals. we talk too much & laugh too loud & live too large, and, frankly, we're suspicious of others who don't.

...as bad as it is here, it's better than being somewhere else." -Chris Rose, regarding life in Post-Katrina New Orleans

If there was no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom." -Judy Deck in an e-mail sent to Chris Rose