Small Town America Quotes

If you're looking for light entertainment, you can't get much lighter than 'Bye Bye Birdie,' a flyweight farce about the coming of rock n' roll to small-town America. ~ Terry Teachout

I don't try to sugarcoat things, but I also think my books make positive statements about the people and values in small-town America. ~ Tawni O'Dell

Too many people glorified small-town America, making it seems like a Normal Rockwell painting, but the reality was something else entirely. With the exception of doctors and lawyers or people who owned their own business, there were no high-paying jobs in Oriental, or any other small town for that matter. And while is was in many way an ideal place to raise young children, there was little for young adults to aspire to.There weren't, nor would there ever be, middle management positions in small towns, nor was there much to do on the weekends, or even new people to meet ~ Nicholas Sparks

That was the moment when Alice knew for sure that she and Charlie Erdling would be friends for the rest of their lives. ~ Sarah Weeks

We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C ... We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. ~ Sarah

The federal government has failed us, so we, the elected officials of small-town America, are getting tough with illegal immigration. ~ Lou Barletta

With small-town America it's always either zombies or communists isn't it. ~ Yahtzee Croshaw

It was the people, the interconnection, everyone relying on everyone else, the closeness. The villages are all dying now, small-town America is dying, and the only place where the same feeling exists now is here, in the city, millions of people all breathing the same air. This, here, now, is more utopia than utopia, more than your pretty little house out in the middle of the forest with only woodchucks for neighbors. Can't you see? All of we kids are here, almost all of the kids from Arcadia, are here in the city. We've gone urban because we're all looking for what we lost. This is the only place that approximates it. The closeness. The connection. ~ Lauren Groff

Growing up in Vancouver, it's not like growing up, you know, in Middle America or the middle of Canada or something. It's a very movie town. ~ Evan Goldberg

From a very young age, I wanted to be an actor, but I lived in a very small town in Florida where there weren't any opportunities for that. ~ Lauren Miller

I was a pretty lousy bass player. But the band I was in couldn't find a bass player in our small town and it was more important to have a bass than keyboards, so that's what I did. ~ Anne Boleyn

The Copse at Hurstbourne is one of those fancy-sounding titles for a brand-new tract of condominiums on the outskirts of town. 'Copse' as in 'a thicket of small trees.' 'Hurst' as in 'hillock, knoll, or mound.' And 'bourne' as in 'brook or stream.' All of these geological and botanical wonders did seem to conjoin within the twenty parcels of the development, but it was hard to understand why it couldn't have just been called Shady Acres, which is what it was. Apparently people aren't willing to pay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a home that doesn't sound like it's part of an Anglo-Saxon land grant. These often quite utilitarian dwellings are never named after Jews or Mexicans. Try marketing Rancho Feinstein if you want to lose money in a hurry. Or Paco Sanchez Park. Middle-class Americans aspire to tone, which is equated, absurdly, with the British gentry. ~ Sue Grafton

I think mobility is very important, not only to discover opportunities elsewhere but at times, also to appreciate better what your home town has. Allahabad, for instance, has the feel of a small, tightly-knit community where everyone participates. ~ Vikas Swarup

You're doing this for Kimmie for free."
"I'd do anything for Kimmie."
"Including bury a body?"
"Especially bury a body. ~ Jamie Farrell

Something tells me that Alex has some demons and I can tell you from experience that those suckers don't go down easy. ~ Mary J. Williams

I was brought up largely by my grandfather because my father only returned from a prisoner-of-war camp in 1947 and worked in the nearest small town, so I hardly ever saw him. ~ W.G. Sebald

She had lovely eyes - an odd, green-blue shade - and a really dirty, likeable smile. She was gorgeous, even with her hair scraped back and wearing that horrible overall thing in a nineteen-fifties blue check - Actually, she was gorgeous because of that. She was just an ordinary gorgeous working girl in a crap job in a small town in the north of England and that broke Given's heart, because he longed to be ordinary. He'd love to date a girl like that. ~ Michael Tyne

He moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, cradling her against him. She fit just right, her head resting on his shoulder. He leaned down and whispered. "What did I did to deserve you?"
Bryce held her there in silence as the sinking sun set the sky on fire with yellow and purple and orange. In this serene setting, everything fell away except the two of them. ~ Tracy March

I want you to stay here ...with me."
"All night?"
"All night."
Drew cupped her face with his hands giving her a gentle kiss. "In my arms. ~ Mary J. Williams

I think if we ignore that night, that kiss, then we're both denying a part of who we are. ~ Samantha Chase

We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by. How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well? ~ Jimmy Wales

He cleared his throat. "I did get carried away with you. Couldn't help myself. And when I said it wouldn't happen again ... " He risked skimming his fingers up her smooth shin. "I hope I lied. ~ Tracy March

The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder ― its DNA ― xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a lef- turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines.

In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Café for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn't recognize. If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere.

But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald's and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald's is Home, condensed into a three-ringed binder and xeroxed. "No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin.

The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. ~ Neal Stephenson

I'm Lou Barletta, and I'm a small town defender. ~ Lou Barletta

I went back to a small town in Poland where my dad grew up. It was a very traumatic experience for me as a young man to know that my father's family were killed by Nazis, killed by Hitler. And that left, you know, if not intellectually, at least an emotional part of me which said, God, we have got to do everything we can to end this kind of horrific racism or anti-Semitism. And I have spent much of my life trying to fight that. ~ Bernie Sanders

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. ~ Natalie Goldberg

I remember the Washington in which I grew up as a genuine small town. Maybe this is true for everyone, that we all feel that the times in which we grew up were simpler, less complex. ~ Katharine Graham

I think that setting a novel in a small town taps into a sense of nostalgia among readers. People tend to believe life is different in small towns, and frankly, it is different. ~ Nicholas Sparks

The villagers had decided that 'practical' meant 'extremely magical and full of interesting objects' and had officially subtitled themselves, Winesap: A Pracktical Towne. ~ Catherynne M Valente

I look forward to a time when my career in a place where I can get out of Los Angeles and find a nice small town like I grew up in to raise my family. ~ Patrick Dempsey

I don't want to live in Maine full time, but the physical beauty is very striking. It is the exact opposite of New York. When you walk through my small town to get a cup of coffee, you bump into five people you know. ~ Elizabeth Strout

Living in a small town anywhere means preserving one's self behind a mask. ~ Doris Lessing

I've never lost a friend over work. I come from a small-town environment and I remember my childhood impressions that, if you were a conniver or a fink or whatever, everybody knew about it and you were a louse for the rest of your life. So I never lost those values in some way. ~ Jack Nicholson

She didn't need a man. She wanted one. ~ Robin Bielman

As a person who came from a small town and had dreams of becoming an actor, I know what it's like to have no support system for what it is that you want to do. A lot of people think you don't have a chance. ~ Anika Noni Rose

Our house was bombed, and the roof fell in. We were sitting under the stairs of the basement, and we were quite safe, but it brought home the realization. In two nights 400 people were killed in small town. ~ Roger Bannister

I grew up in a small town that was absolutely a perfect embodiment of new urbanism. ~ Leon Krier

I don't need to be dead to see something like that. Besides, I know you pretty well by now. You better slow down before you run out of eligible men. This is a small town. ~ J.J. Cook

Growing up in a small town gives you two things: a sense of place and a feeling of self-consciousness - self-consciousness about one's education and exposure, both of which tend to be limited. On the other hand, limited possibilities also mean creating your own options. ~ E.L. Konigsburg

I was in Kansas for about a month, and we worked most of the time in a very small town, so it felt like the production basically took the whole town over. In a way, we were the Martians in Kansas. ~ Lukas Haas

If I'd grown up in Atlanta and then gone to Ottumwa, Iowa it may have been culture shock, but I was used to being in a small town and used to seeing the same people all the time and going to the same grocery store every day, so it wasn't that big of a deal for me. I was just excited to be on TV. I was just jumping for joy when I got there. I wasn't making any money, but I was sure happy. ~ Todd Grisham

Every husband knows that nuclear energy is not the most powerful force on earth. It's not even a close second. The most powerful and awesome force on earth is a woman's emotions. Nothing can match it in sheer intensity and shocking impact. I truly believe that one twenty-minute outburst from a woman could power a small town for three days. ~ David E. Clarke

It is easy to make friends, but not so easy to keep them in the long term. You cancel a couple of arrangements because you are tired, or it seems too far to travel in traffic, and then next thing you know you have not seen somebody you considered a close friend in over a year. In the small town where I grew up, you saw the same people day in and day out for years. My mother was friends with the girls she went to school with until the day she died. I enjoyed the anonymous freedoms of the city, but now I wondered if I had enjoyed them enough to justify being lonely in my latter years. I missed seeing people every day, meeting old friends and making new ones. ~ Kate Kerrigan

The twenty hooves of the horses slowed their relentless cadence on the damp ground as they approached the town. A sudden cloudburst had only just ended, and steaming snorts emitted from the winded mounts. From behind the edge of the bizarre leather mask that covered half of the leader's face, a small smile of recognition curled on his chapped lips. ~ C.G. Faulkner

As a rule, she didn't like boys very much, but she had to admit, Charlie was actually pretty nice. ~ Sarah Weeks

Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Not that St. Ogg's was empty of women with some tenderness of heart and conscience; probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness in it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid,–too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St. Ogg's were not all brave, by any means; some of them were even fond of scandal, and to an extent that might have given their conversation an effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at St. Ogg's that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment of each other. ~ George Eliot

Arthur checked himself into a small motel on the outskirts of town, and sat glumly on the bed, which was damp, and flipped through the little information brochure, which was also damp. It said that the planet of NowWhat had been named after the opening words of the first settlers to arrive there after struggling across light years of space to reach the furthest unexplored outreaches of the Galaxy. The main town was called OhWell. ~ Douglas Adams