In Charleston, more than elsewhere, you get the feeling that the twentieth century is a vast, unconscionable mistake.
Essence is something I always enjoy, because I love New Orleans. Since they brought it back to New Orleans, it's a special place to me. We been doing it since the beginning. We did it when it was in Houston, but there's nothing like New Orleans.
I always felt growing up that in the South there was evil but also good - so much good.
Southern gentility is evocative to me.
You get below the Mason-Dixon line and you have some of the best music, culture, the two races, the literature, and it's so rich.
I'm from South Georgia, so my mom, she always cooked some dang good food when I was growing up.
A lot of people don't know, but I love soul food. I love fried chicken and pork chops, all of that.
I have a deep affinity for New Orleans - its like a second home to me - they treat me like I'm their own.
The biggest difference from Hawaii and Alabama would probably be there's no beaches. But other than that, the people are very nice.
I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana. It's not a black-and-white type of thing down there. It's a very cultural place. Everybody has the same accent. It's not like if you're white we can't hang with you or anything like that. So it's easy for us to call each other out on our things.
I grew up in Texas, and I think anybody who grows up in the Midwest or in the South, it's just a different way of life.
I think that my mother, Frances Dorothy Peck, modeled her whole life on that of Scarlett O'Hara.
People come to Nashville where I live and they say, 'What's a great Southern restaurant?' Well, you got to know the right grandmother, because there's a lot of magic to good Southern cooking.
I was raised in South Alabama in the woods, y'know? I'm country.
New Orleans - the real New Orleans - is the soul of the country.
My wife's family lives up in South Carolina, so we go back and forth quite a bit up there.
I feel like I'm a New Yorker to the bone. But there is a lot of the South in me. I know there is a lot of the South in my mannerisms. There's a lot of the South in my expectations of other people and how people treat each other. There's a lot of the South in the way I speak, but it could never be home.
I live in Florida and people are crazy here. And I say that lovingly.
Anybody that's been in Indiana for five minutes knows that Hoosier hospitality is not a slogan, it's a reality.
Someday maybe I'll go back and see what the Deep South is like.
I don't want to cancel the South out in my life. I carry my Southernness with me. God knows, it's a great place to come from. It's also a place I had to get away from. It is just an endless world for me, so much culture and eccentricity.
I'm glad I'm Southern. I'm the Southerner who's very Southern in that she left to move to New York.
You knows dat in New Orleans is not morning 'til dee sun come up.
What we do in New Orleans, man - we party!
I'm from Louisiana, and I'm used to having space and a yard.
