Ninth Ward Quotes

The world can be a hard place sometimes... You have to have heart. You have to be strong. Parents want their children to grow up to be strong. Not just any strong, mind you, but loving strong.

But you...are my sweetest gift. The life surprise that soothed all my ills and gave me my greatest joys. I feel so blessed you are mine. —Mama Ya-Ya

If people are troubled by their view, they ought to offer these New Orleanians, and black and poor people in the places like the Lower Ninth Ward around the country, a reason to believe otherwise.

A blood ward is for those without imagination

Won’t you look at me, Camilla Hect?” Camilla murmured something that Nona could not hear. The body said, “I died, and you carried me. I gambled, and you covered my bet. You kept the faith, and were the instrument of both my vengeance and my grace. And now I have fought through time, and the River, and Ianthe the First—fought and bested Ianthe the First, and I hope I never fight her ever again…Will you not look at me now, Cam, and know me?” Camilla raised her chin. She looked at the dead face. She said quietly—“Yes Warden. I will always know you.” Their foreheads touched. Camilla reached out with her slippery hand, and Palamedes clasped it with Ianthe Naberius’s cold, gloveless one. Because both of their hands were very messy, it made an embarrassing squelch, but neither of them appeared to notice or care. Nona had to look away. She heard Palamedes say, in the voice of Ianthe Naberius—“Pyrrha, I can barely do anything. I’m only the hand in a sock puppet. I don’t think I could unpick a single ward, and I can’t do a damn thing for Cam’s bleeding—thank God nothing’s protruding.” Cam said, without opening her eyes, “Don’t worry about me, Warden. I’ll walk it off.” “Yes, thank you for your input,” said Palamedes pleasantly. “I’ve taken it under advisement and will add it to the next agenda.” Camilla smiled that wonderful hot-metal smile that Nona loved as long as she had been alive. “Jackass.

I just turned sixteen last week,” she said. “But I don’t have my license yet.” “You sound like you’re from New Orleans,” Debbie told her, doing her best to pronounce it N’Awlins. Whoadie nodded. “I live in the Ninth Ward,” she said. “That’s actually where my nickname comes from. Whoadie is how the locals say wardie. That’s a person who lives in the same ward as you,” she explained. “My parents called me Whoadie ever since I was a baby. I didn’t always like it, because there were some boys at school used to call me Whoadie the Toadie all the time. But then I punched their fucking lights out and they stopped.

Not too long before, she would have maintained that no matter how well things were going, she would never be truly happy again, because her father was no longer with her. But he was here. She felt him every time she walked into the kitchen at this restaurant. She felt him whenever she walked into her mother's house in the Ninth Ward, or when she was in the house she and Naveen shared uptown. She felt him everywhere. And because she knew his spirit would always be with her, no matter how far she traveled or how long they were apart, Tiana now knew true happiness.

440,000 residents were scattered all around the country. But New Orleans did survive. And years later, it continues to recover — building by building, house by house, tree by tree, road by road, family by family. Seventy-five percent of residents have returned. To many visitors, the city seems as vibrant as it always was, with unforgettable music and food, beautiful buildings and gardens, and streets that bustle with energy unlike any other city in America. But in some of the poorest and hardest-hit neighborhoods, recovery has been painfully slow. If Barry were to come back to the Lower Ninth Ward today, he would see few of his neighbors smiling down from their porches. Much of the Lower Nine is still abandoned. Only 19 percent of that neighborhood’s residents have returned.

No one spared Alex a glance. All eyes were on the Haruspex, his lean face hidden behind a surgical mask, pale blue robes spattered with blood. His latex-gloved hands moved methodically through the bowels of the—patient? Subject? Sacrifice? Alex wasn’t sure which term applied to the man on the table. Not “sacrifice.” He’s supposed to live. Ensuring that was part of her job. She’d see him safely through this ordeal and back to the hospital ward he’d been taken from. But what about a year from now? she wondered. Five years from now?

It’s funny how you can hear only a few cords from a song and it’ll transport you back in time to a particular person or place.

And sometimes the crying doesn’t stop when the music ends.

New Orleans would always be New Orleans, he told himself, no matter if it had gone under the waves, no matter if cynical and self-serving politicians had left the people of the lower Ninth Ward to drown. New Orleans was a song and a state of mind and a party that never ended, and those who did not understand that simple fact should have to get passports to enter the city.