Home > Topic > a small town
1 " People fear anyone who differs from what is considered normal, and in a small town the idea of normal can be as narrow as the streets. "
― Elizabeth Chandler , The Back Door of Midnight (Dark Secrets, #5)
2 " We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter. . . Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficiency. A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp's half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer's task to say, " It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café when you can eat macrobiotic at home." Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist – the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing. "
3 " So I had nothing to distract me from my books and their other worlds that swallowed me whole, from Narnia to the Wisconsin woods, from a small town in Sweden to the red earth of Prince Edward Island. Nothing and no one interested me as much as my books. "
― Luisa Weiss
4 " There aren't many berry bushes where I'm from." " And just where would that be?" His hand paused on a berry like it was a monumental decision whether to pluck it or not. He finally pulled and explained he was from a small town in the southernmost part of Morringhan. When I asked the name, he said it was very small and had no name...." A town with no name? Really? How very odd." I waited for him to scramble, and he didn't disappoint me." It's only a region. A few scattered dwellings at most. We're farmers there. Mostly farmers. And you? Where are you from?" ...I took the berry still poised in his fingers and popped it in my mouth. Where was I from? I narrowed my eyes and smiled. " A small town in the northernmost part of Morrighan. Mostly farmers. Only a regions, really. A few scattered dwellings. At most. No name." He couldn't restrain a chuckle. " Then we come from opposite but similar worlds, don't we? "
5 " Sometimes I want to quit - not performing, but being a woman altogether. I want to throw my hands in the air after reading a mean Twitter comment and say, " All right, you got me. You figured me out. I'm not pretty. I'm not thin. I don't deserve love. I have no right to use my voice. I will start wearing a burka and move to a small town upstate and wait tables at a pancake house." So much has changed about me since I was that confident, happy girl in high school. In the years since then, I've experienced a lot of desperation and self-doubt, but in a way, I've come full circle. I know my worth. I embrace my power. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story. I will. I'll speak and share and fuck and love, and I will never apologise for it. I am amazing for you, not because of you. I am not who I sleep with. I am not my weight. I am not my mother. I am myself. And I am all of you. "
6 " This reasoning is based on the wishful thinking that genius can only be earned through education and hard work. It denies the time-proven truth that genius can strike like a random bolt of lightning, at any time in any place, even in a humble glover's home in a small town in Elizabethan England. "
― Andrea Mays , The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare's First Folio
7 " Just because you're from a small town doesn't mean that you're small. Don't ever think anyone's more important than you are or has more valid experiences. "
8 " He thought moving to a small town would allow him to find a way to get along to some extent but people were just plain idiots. "
― Christine Feehan , Magic in the Wind (Drake Sisters, #1)
9 " He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think. "
― Victor Hugo , Les Misérables
10 " Be myself. If only I remembered what it was like to be myself. I’m a fucking waitress in a crappy bar in a small town in the middle of nowhere. I was going nowhere. I had nothing to give him beside myself and my heart and he denied me. "
― Stephanie Witter , Six Years
11 " Earth is a small town with many neighborhoods in a very big universe. "
― Ron Garan , The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles
12 " Throughout history, there have been people who mattered more. Some of them, like Ulysses S. Grant and Winston Churchill and Jonas Salk, changed the course of history in grand strokes. Others, like Reuben Styrlund and Dora Salk, made a meaningful difference on a smaller stage...Remembered or not lived out in a small town or on the world's stage, the journey of relevance matters. "
― , Relevance: Matter More
13 " Lestat and Louie feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun. They would never hurt immortals who choose to spend eternity going to high school over and over again in a small town ---- anymore than they would hurt the physically disabled or the mentally challenged. My vampires possess gravitas. They can afford to be merciful. "
― Anne Rice
14 " Our lives are marked by the people who choose to matter more: the teacher who encouraged our curiosity, the neighbor who lent a helping hand in time of need, the great leaders and perceptive thinkers whose vision and innovation improve the quality of our lives. And that's what it means to matter more. It's not about pursuit of riches or fame. It's about making a difference in people's lives. Remembered or not, lived out in a small town or on the world stage, the journey of relevance matters. "
15 " The morning opens, a mist of innocence appears across the countryside that tells each one of us the day is new. That feeling of hope, love and the humble awareness of our duty becomes clear if even for a moment. It is that experience of inspiration that follows us into a small town woken by a cool frost on this Sunday morning and the laughter of children playing. "
― , Norma Jean's Sun
16 " At the base of her ankle is a deep, ugly scar she got when a car ran over her foot when she was six years old. That was in a small town in Bangladesh. Thus, even today, she hesitates superstitiously before crossing the road, and is painfully shy of walking distances. Her fears make her laughable. The scar is printed on her skin like a radiant star. "
― Amit Chaudhuri , Afternoon Raag
17 " The price of coming from a small town is that everyone knows your story. Your book has been read, shelved, dusted, and re-read by everybody. "
― Brian Joyce , The B-Side Diaries
18 " Hail fellow well meet on the highway to madness. Madness is a small town very far away. Most of us, at some point, find we probably could walk there. Others have a road cave in and dump them there. "
19 " Being a divorcee in a small town is a little like playing Monopoly "
20 " Let's make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. To sit on the front steps--whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city--and to talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color....And I hardly need to tell you that in the 19- or 24-inch view of the world, cleanliness has long since eclipsed godliness. Soon we'll all smell, look, and actually be laboratory clean, as sterile on the inside as on the out. The perfect consumer, surrounded by the latest appliances. The perfect audience, with a ringside seat to almost any event in the world, without smell, without taste, without feel--alone and unhappy in the vast wasteland of our living rooms. I think that what we actually need, of course, is a little more dirt on the seat of our pants as we sit on the front stoop and talk to our neighbors once again, enjoying the type of summer day where the smell of garlic travels slightly faster than the speed of sound. "
