You can look at parts of the city and say it shouldn't have been built that way in the first place, and we shouldn't rebuild it that way.

I have felt bereft. The city Richard and I knew and loved, that city's gone, I think irrevocably.

Trying to re-create what was a big jumble created by 300 years of history is going to be the most interesting urban planning challenge of this century.

How do we rebuild a city that is so complicated, and interestingly so? ... There will be an impulse to do this completely rationally, then we'll end up with something that has none of New Orleans' quality. One of the charms of New Orleans was the irrationality.

I see houses that are maintained to different degrees, I see gardens that are maintained to different degrees, ... One of the things that I would look for would be a design that very quickly would reveal individual enthusiasm of individual residents. ... Anything monolithic can, if it's designed well, look less monolithic.

Several years ago, I was creating a Christmas present for the family, a self-published cookbook featuring recipes my grandmother had collected and created over decades. While interviewing her for the biographical section, she began to talk about her courtship with my late grandfather.