New Orleans in an amazing town.

New Orleans is like the bad-kid island in 'Pinocchio.'

Mrs. Reilly called in that accent that occurs south of New Jersey only in New Orleans, that Hoboken near the Gulf of Mexico.

He's got that New Orleans thing crawling all over him, that good stuff, that We Are the Champions, to hell with the rest and I'll just start over kind of attitude.

Everybody here has a story. New Orleans was always a place where people talked too much even if they had nothing to say.

Now everyone's got something to say.

But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art.