Art & Creativity Quote by Jimmy Buffett

Buffett’s line smuggles a whole worldview inside a casual shrug: creativity isn’t just inside you, it’s in the air. That’s a very Buffett move, because his brand was never tortured-genius solitude; it was permeability. The writer (and for him, songwriter, storyteller, lifestyle salesman) is a tuned instrument, and certain cities play you better than others.

New Orleans is doing heavy lifting here as more than a backdrop. It’s an argument about permission. The place is famous for letting art be communal, nocturnal, improvised, a little porous at the edges. You don’t have to earn weirdness there; you can borrow it. For a musician who built an empire on sunburned escape hatches and half-serious philosophies, saying “I believe in that” is quietly defiant: it rejects the Protestant idea that good work is pure discipline and suffering. Instead, it suggests craft can be coaxed by rhythm, food, humidity, brass coming from a doorway you weren’t aiming for.

The subtext is also self-mythmaking, and it’s gentle, not grandiose. Buffett frames productivity as geography, which makes inspiration feel democratic: you can travel toward it. It’s a romantic map, but it’s also pragmatic. Artists have always had “spots” because scenes matter - the people you overhear, the local idioms, the way a city’s history gives you metaphors for free.

In the context of Buffett’s career, New Orleans is a credible shrine: Gulf Coast syncretism, barroom storytelling, music as social glue. He’s naming the ecosystem that helped make his kind of Americana feel inevitable.