Mardi Gras Quotes

“So,” I demanded, trying to sound confident, “where can we find this trod to New Orleans?”
“The frost giant ruins,” Ash replied, looking thoughtful. “Very close to Mab’s court.” At Puck’s glare, he shrugged and offered a tiny, rueful smirk. “She goes to Mardi Gras every year.”
I pictured the Queen of the Unseelie Court flashing a couple of drunken partygoers, and giggled uncontrollably. All three shot me a strange look. “Sorry,” I gasped, biting my lip. "Still kind of giddy, I guess.”
― Julie Kagawa, The Iron King

“To encapsulate the notion of Mardi Gras as nothing more than a big drunk is to take the simple and stupid way out, and I, for one, am getting tired of staying stuck on simple and stupid.

Mardi Gras is not a parade. Mardi Gras is not girls flashing on French Quarter balconies. Mardi Gras is not an alcoholic binge.

Mardi Gras is bars and restaurants changing out all the CD's in their jukeboxes to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, and it is annual front-porch crawfish boils hours before the parades so your stomach and attitude reach a state of grace, and it is returning to the same street corner, year after year, and standing next to the same people, year after year--people whose names you may or may not even know but you've watched their kids grow up in this public tableau and when they're not there, you wonder: Where are those guys this year?

It is dressing your dog in a stupid costume and cheering when the marching bands go crazy and clapping and saluting the military bands when they crisply snap to.

Now that part, more than ever.

It's mad piano professors converging on our city from all over the world and banging the 88's until dawn and laughing at the hairy-shouldered men in dresses too tight and stalking the Indians under Claiborne overpass and thrilling the years you find them and lamenting the years you don't and promising yourself you will next year.

It's wearing frightful color combination in public and rolling your eyes at the guy in your office who--like clockwork, year after year--denies that he got the baby in the king cake and now someone else has to pony up the ten bucks for the next one.

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, 1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories

“Mardi Gras, baby. Mardi Gras. Time when all manner of weird shit cuts loose and parties down.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, No Mercy

“Those who have not lived in New Orleans have missed an incredible, glorious, vital city--a place with an energy unlike anywhere else in the world, a majority-African American city where resistance to white supremacy has cultivated and supported a generous, subversive, and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues, and and hip-hop to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funerals, and the citywide tradition of red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and food and traditions and sexuality and liberation.”
― Jordan Flaherty, Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six

“She was evil. Couldn't he, who killed demons with his own hands, realize that? And now I had to run for Mardi Gras Queen because of him. Or her. I didn't know whose fault it was but there was no way I could back down now.”
― Jenna-Lynne Duncan, Aftermath

“That didn’t sound like them slinging beads at us. Think if I whip my shirt off, they’ll go blind and leave?” Nick”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, Invision

“I thought you hated wizards,” I said.
“I do.”
He kissed me again”
― Suzanne Johnson, Frenchman Street

“During the Mardi Gras carnival in New Orleans, drunk and drugged and sleepless for sex-driven nights and days, I saw leering clowns on gaudy floats tossing cheap necklaces to grasping hands that clutched and grabbed and tore them, spilling beads; and revelers crawled on littered streets, wrestling for them, bleeding for them on sidewalks; and beads fell on spattered blood like dirty tears—and I saw costumed revelers turn into angels, angels into demons, demons into clowning angels; and in a flashing moment the night split open into a deeper, darker chasm out of which soared demonic clowning angels laughing.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“Once you’ve been on this earth a bit longer, you’ll accept that you can’t save everyone.”
― Suzanne Johnson, Frenchman Street

“Nothing beats a glass bottle of Coke and a trusty Moon Pie under the heat of the Alabama sun.”
― Joseph Carro, The Little Coffee Shop of Horrors Anthology 2

“Mobile’s reputation as the birthplace of Mardi Gras in North America does not rest solely on the fact that a few half-starved French colonists observed the pre-Lenten feasts here 300 years ago… In 1852, a group of Mobile "Cowbellians" moved to New Orleans and formed the Krewe of Comus, which is now that larger city’s oldest and most secretive Carnival society.
…All of Mobile’s parading societies throw Moon Pies along with beads and doubloons, providing sugary nourishment to the revelers lining the streets.
The crowd is very regional, mostly coastal Alabamians. Everyone seems to know each other, and they are always honored and often extra hospitable when they learn that you traveled a long way just to visit *their* Carnival. Late into the evening, silk-gowned debutantes with their white-tie and tail clad escorts who’ve grown weary of their formal balls blend easily with the street crowds…”
― Gary Bridgman, Lonely Planet Louisiana & the Deep South

“Mardi Gras in Cuba was one of the most uninhibited festivals I have ever witnessed. Although I do not condone the criminal elements that existed behind the festive atmosphere, I dove into the sweeping pleasures without guilt. At my age, life was to be lived, and live it I did! Most of the people surrounding me, on the packed streets of Havana, came from the United States. It also seemed that half of the Miami Police Force was there for these unrestrained festivities.
Perhaps the excesses I witnessed are to be criticized, but it was all fun and well beyond my imagination. Everything was new and extremely exciting at the time. The many beautiful girls, who were said to have been exploited, certainly were as caught up in the euphoria as we were and enjoyed the moment every bit as much as we did. The decorated cars and beautiful floats with girls and guys waving, were followed by people dancing to the loud Latin beat. The jubilant parade wound its way along the coastal route to the Avenida Maceo, having started from the wide boulevard Calle G or Avenida de los Presidentes. Crowds of tourists and other revelers laughed and cheered. Smaller, but every bit as intense, were celebrations on other main streets such as Calle Neptuno. Everyone had a great time, and thanks to our officers, even our available time ashore was extended by an hour. I don’t think that it was abused by anyone, but the next day we were all tired and nursing hangovers.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Salty & Saucy Maine"

“We should easily be home by eleven. Unless, of course, we were dead.”
― Suzanne Johnson, Frenchman Street

“How come I’m always shopping for chicks and babies?”
― Suzanne Johnson, Frenchman Street

“There were naked breasts everywhere. Literally.”
― Erin Nicholas, My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

“Fighting a Mardi-Gras-In-New-Orleans crowd for eight blocks from Trahan’s Tavern on St. Peter to Bourbon O on Bourbon was like a man being willing to swim the Nile, climb Mount Everest, and cross the Sahara for true love.”
― Erin Nicholas, My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

“Some people find it to be heaven, others purgatory. You, my son, are in hell. I'm taking a role they gave me as one of the demons who get to punish you, a role I plan on taking very seriously and enjoying immensely. You'll be begging for my company, and seeing as I've been lonely for so long”
― bellatuscana, The Mardi Gras Queen

“Barbados -Crop Over/Kadooment Day,
Brazil /Carnival, New Orleans /Mardi Gras,
Trinidad /Jouvay ”
― Charmaine J. Forde

“She reached into the burlap sack that she kept draped over her shoulder and retrieved a large spray of lavender and bunches of marigold.
"To decorate your supper club," Ms. Rose said. "They are the colors of Mardi Gras: purple for justice, gold for power, and the green leaves represent faith."
"These are beautiful," Tiana said as she took the flowers. Their coloring was so vivid they looked otherworldly.”
― Farrah Rochon, Almost There

“Beltane, man! It’s, uh . . . Irish, I think. But even better than Paddy’s Day. It’s like Mardi Gras meets Halloween!”
― Cliff Jones Jr., Dreck