When it comes to a city that truly lives by its own beat, New Orleans is one of a kind. It’s basically what would happen if jazz music and butter had a baby and raised it on bourbon. These New Orleans quotes capture the soul of the Crescent City — its music, food, and legendary spirit that make it impossible to forget.
The Big Easy has a magnetic pull that’s hard to explain but impossible to ignore. It’s the kind of place where you can eat jambalaya while watching a random brass band perform on a street corner — and somehow that feels completely normal. Known for its vibrant culture, incredible music, and a unique blend of French, Creole, and Cajun flavors, New Orleans treats every day like it just found $50 in its pocket.
This collection of New Orleans quotes taps into what makes this city so special, capturing its quirks, its romance, and yes, even a bit of its wild side. From famous words by Tennessee Williams to lines that practically make you smell chicory coffee, these quotes will have you dreaming of New Orleans.
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Table of Contents
Do You Love New Orleans?
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Quotes About New Orleans’ Magnetic Charm
Some cities impress with shiny skyscrapers or an incredible coffee culture. But New Orleans? She’s a force. These quotes reveal the Crescent City’s unique charm that pulls people back again and again.
“If I could put my finger on it, I’d bottle it and sell it. I came down here originally in 1972 with some drunken fraternity guys and had never seen anything like it — the climate, the smells. It’s the cradle of music; it just flipped me. Someone suggested that there’s an incomplete part of our chromosomes that gets repaired or found when we hit New Orleans. Some of us just belong here.”
— John Goodman, Actor
“In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home. It was rich, almost sweet, like the scent of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard. I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume.”
― Anne Rice in Interview with the Vampire
“As long as I’m in New Orleans, I’m not away from home.”
― Fats Domino
“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”
― Tennessee Williams
“I have a deep affinity for New Orleans ― it’s like a second home to me. They treat me like I’m their own.”
― Teena Marie
“There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.”
― Bob Dylan
“New Orleans has a real spirit. It’s the most authentic of all American cities.”
― Brad Pitt
“If there was no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom.”
― Chris Rose
“New Orleans is an amazing town.”
— Benjamin Walker
“I think New Orleans is such a beautiful city. It looks like a fairytale when you walk through the French Quarter or the Garden District. There is such a lush sense of color, style, architecture — and the people themselves.”
— Anika Noni Rose
“Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?”
— Louis Armstrong
“How did you fall in love with New Orleans? At once, madly. Sometimes I think it was predestined.”
— Andrei Codrescu
“Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits, the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.”
― John Kennedy Toole in A Confederacy of Dunces
“The one thing that sticks with me is that I love New Orleans. It’s not a city. It’s a way of life. It’s a place that you fall deeply in love with.”
― Jesse Moore
“If you love New Orleans, she’ll love you back.”
― Drew Brees
The Soulful Sounds of the Big Easy
Some cities have a music scene. New Orleans? The entire city IS the music scene. From brass bands on street corners to jazz clubs that haven’t changed their lightbulbs since Louis Armstrong was in diapers, the music in New Orleans flows as naturally as the Mississippi River.
“I don’t know what America would be without New Orleans and the music.”
― Trombone Shorty
“In New Orleans, music is part of the culture. You’re raised with it, from the cradle to the grave, and all in-between.”
― Aaron Neville
“There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. ”
― Boris Vian
“In New Orleans, culture doesn’t come down from on high, it bubbles up from the streets.”
— Ellis Marsalis
“I’m not sure, but I’m almost positive, that all music came from New Orleans.”
— Ernie K Doe
“Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, once told me that when a brass band plays at a small club back up in one of the neighborhoods, it’s as if the audience — dancing, singing to the refrains, laughing — is part of the band. They are two parts of the same thing. The dancers interpret, or it might be better to say literally embody, the sounds of the band, answering the instruments.”
― Tom Piazza in Why New Orleans Matters
Quotes About New Orleans Cuisine
I’m not saying that New Orleans invented flavor, but I’m also not NOT saying that. If food had a personality, New Orleans’s cuisine would be spicy, soulful, and ready to party. Each bite is a religious experience that’ll have you speaking in tongues (or at least licking your plate when nobody’s looking).
“New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”
― Mark Twain
“In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful.”
―Anthony Bourdain
“You get a taste here in New Orleans that you don’t get anywhere else in the country.”
— Regis Philbin
The Spirit of New Orleans
Some cities have a spirit. New Orleans has spirits — both the kind you drink and the kind that allegedly haunt that creepy mansion on the corner. These quotes capture the true spirit of the city, from its famous Mardi Gras celebrations to its everyday love of life.
“I’m not going to lay down in words the lure of this place. Every great writer in the land, from Faulkner to Twain to Rice to Ford, has tried to do it and fallen short. It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance, and spirit of south Louisiana in words and to try is to roll down a road of clichés, bouncing over beignets and beads and brass bands and it just is what it is. It is home.”
― Chris Rose in 1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories
“In New Orleans, we celebrate everything. It’s probably the only place you’ll see people dancing in a funeral home.”
― Trombone Shorty
“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.”
― Chris Rose in 1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories
“Everything in New Orleans is a good idea.”
― Bob Dylan
“You don’t need a guidebook to see New Orleans – just a good pair of shoes.”
― James Carville
Quotes About the Dark Side of the Crescent City
Every city has its shadows, but only New Orleans makes them look good. Maybe it’s all the vampire novels set here, or perhaps it’s because any city that parties this hard needs a mysterious side to balance things out.
“New Orleans is like the bad-kid island in Pinocchio.”
― Jonah Hill
“New Orleans is kind of dark in a very beautiful way.”
― Nicole Gale Anderson
“There’s also the tradition of voodoo, the Haitian magic arts, in New Orleans. And because New Orleans is below sea level, when they bury people in New Orleans, it’s mostly above ground. So you have this idea that the spirits are more accessible and can access you more easily because they’re not even buried.”
— Sam Trammell
“The city itself, I like the vibes of New Orleans.”
― Zion Williamson
“I’d love to live in New Orleans. I love the freedom of it — for good and for bad.”
― James Gandolfini
“Ain’t no place like New Orleans. It’s one of a kind.”
― Aaron Neville
“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.”
― Anne Rice in Interview with the Vampire
“Madame Lily Devalier always asked ‘Where are you?’ in a way that insinuated that there were only two places on earth one could be: New Orleans and somewhere ridiculous.”
― Tom Robbins in Jitterbug Perfume
“Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue in New Orleans on Mardi Gras = bad idea!”
― Nikki Sixx in The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star
“When a lot of people are calling it a night at 2 AM, New Orleans is coming alive.”
― Mannie Fresh
“Mrs. Reilly called in that accent that occurs south of New Jersey only in New Orleans, that Hoboken near the Gulf of Mexico.”
― John Kennedy Toole in A Confederacy of Dunces
“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.”
― Chris Rose in 1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories
“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.”
― Chris Rose in 1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories
“But there’s no place like New Orleans. It’s got the best food. It’s got the best music. It’s got the best people. It’s got the most fun stuff to do.”
― Harry Connick Jr.
“You find as a writer that there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.”
— Jimmy Buffett
“If you’re open to it, New Orleans will teach you about yourself, but if you want to hide from who you really are, the city will help you do that, too.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton
New Orleans Captions for Instagram
Once you’ve wandered the French Quarter and danced to a brass band on Bourbon Street, you know that “Had fun in NOLA” just doesn’t cut it as a caption. These Instagram captions bring that Big Easy energy to your feed, helping you capture the vibe with just the right words.
- A big blur of fun
- A little party never killed nobody
- All I need is a six-month vacation to New Orleans — twice a year
- Beale Street Squad
- Because a bad day in NOLA still beats a good day anywhere else
- Big Easy energy
- Bourbon Street is my happy place
- Dancing to the beads of New Orleans
- Exploring NOLA one bite, one song, and one sunset at a time
- Feeling extra jazzy today
- Hangin’ with my krewe in French Quarter
- I came, I saw, I ate everything in New Orleans
- I left my heart (and my waistline) in New Orleans
- I’m kind of a bead deal
- I’m not shellfish, but you can’t share my gumbo
- I promise I’ll always be bayou side
- In my NOLA Era
- In New Orleans, every street tells a story
- In New Orleans, the good times never stop — they just keep rolling
- In New Orleans, the music and food feed the soul like nowhere else
- In NOLA, life is always a little sweeter and a lot more fun
- Is that jazz I hear, or am I just happy to see you?
- Just a girl who loves New Orleans
- Laissez les bons temps rouler!
- Let the good times roll
- Let the rhythm of NOLA carry you through the day
- Life is just a party
- Lost in the music, flavors, and magic of NOLA
- Meanwhile, in New Orleans …
- Meet me in NOLA
- New Orleans and all that jazz
- New Orleans has a heartbeat that you can’t help but dance to
- New Orleans has a way of wrapping you in its warmth and never letting go.
- New Orleans is a city that knows how to make you feel alive
- New Orleans is a city that speaks to your soul and moves your feet
- New Orleans is a feast for the senses — taste, sound, and sight
- New Orleans is good for the soul
- New Orleans is like a good song — it gets better every time you visit
- New Orleans is more than a city; it’s an energy that pulls you in
- New Orleans: where every night feels like an endless celebration
- New Orleans: where the music is the heartbeat of the city
- No matter the question, beignets are the answer
- NOLA is a city that dances to its own beat
- NOLA: Where the calories don’t count, but the memories do
- Po’boys are the best boys
- Ready to make bad decisions
- Relationship status: Falling in love with NOLA
- Summertime, and the livin’ is easy …
- The only blues in New Orleans come from the music
- The only thing better than the food in NOLA is the feeling it leaves you with
- The whole city is a dance floor
- Warning: One trip to NOLA and you’ll never fit back into your jeans
- Will do bad deeds for plastic beads
- You’re the red beans to my rice
- Young, wild, and free
What’s Your Favorite New Orleans Quote?
Which of these quotes makes you want to binge on beignets and then head to Bourbon Street to laissez les bon temps rouler? Is one of your favorite quotes about New Orleans missing from this list? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
