Loulou

“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“There is a velvety sensuality here at the mouth of the Mississippi that you won't find anywhere else. Tell me what the air feels like at 3 A.M. on a Thursday night in August in Shaker Heights and I bet you won't be able to say because nobody stays up that late. But in New Orleans, I tell you, it's ink and honey passed through silver moonlight.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage