Anne Rice on CNN

From CNN:

Anne Rice's novels, including "Interview With the Vampire" and "The Queen of the Damned," are a stew of horror, overt eroticism and lush, atmospheric settings -- often located in her hometown of New Orleans. But nothing can compare to the real-life misery being faced by the Crescent City and its residents today, she told CNN's Paula Zahn. "It is a cataclysm. It's something like the destruction of the city of Pompeii," she said in an interview to air Friday night on "Paula Zahn Now." "We've just never seen anything like this in America, and it's happening to New Orleans -- the place where I was born that shaped my life, that shaped my novels, that shaped my whole career and where many, many people I love still live and work and struggle to deal with this crisis." snip "More New Orleanians responded to this evacuation than they ever had in the past to any storm," she pointed out. "[But] if you're a minimum-wage worker and you're living in a house with a 92-year-old mother with a walker and maybe a daughter-in-law with two small children, how are you going to get up and get out of New Orleans because the storm is coming? ... These are Americans. ... They did the best they could."