Creole Heritage Quotes

My father was a dark-skinned brother, but my mother was a very fair-skinned lady. From what I understand, she was Creole; we think her people originally came from New Orleans. She looked almost like a white woman, which meant she could pass - as folks used to say back then. Her hair was jet-black. She was slim and very attractive.

My mother's mother is Jewish and African, so I guess that would be considered Creole. My mother's father was Cherokee Indian and something else. My dad's mother's Puerto Rican and black, and his father was from Barbados.

In all my stories and novels, no one ever escapes Louisiana. Maybe that is because my soul never left Louisiana, although my body did go to California.

The history of New Orleans was always a fascination to me - such a blend of light and darkness and plague and pleasure and hedonism and fear and death. It's just a very, very intriguing city. I have this strange love relationship with it.

I'm Creole, and I'm down to earth.

My family is part Creole, and we're Indian, and we're also very, very black. My father was so black, he was blue.

People from here will often say, "I'm not from the United States, I'm from New Orleans."

Louisiana is a place that you escape, not a place that you leave.

Like the tangled veins of cypress roots that meander this way and that in the swamp, everything in New Orleans is interrelated, wrapped around itself in ways that aren't always obvious.

New Orleans may well have been the most liberal Deep South city in 1954 because of its large Creole population, the influence of the French, and its cosmopolitan atmosphere.

I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.