Let me tell you something 'bout these rich Uptown folk," said Cokie. "They got everything that money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain't happy. They ain't ever gone be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can't fix that, no sir.

He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot. We were about to become cigarettes.

Mrs. Rimas cried at the mention of the wafer and the traditional Christmas blessing. "God grant that we are all together again next year.

Decisions, they shape our destiny.

New Orleans is unlike any city in America. Its cultural diversity is woven into the food, the music, the architecture - even the local superstitions. It's a sensory experience on all levels and there's a story lurking around every corner.

Charlie Marlowe never wrote horror, but somehow horror was writing Charlie Marlowe.

My art teacher had said that if you breathed deeply and imagined something, you could be there. You could see it, feel it. During our standoffs with the NKVD, I learned to do that. I clung to my rusted dreams during the times of silence. It was at gunpoint that I fell into every hope and allowed myself to wish from the deepest part of my heart. Komorov thought he was torturing us. But we were escaping into a stillness within ourselves. We found strength there.