Small Town Life Quotes

Anybody who suggests that I run for governor is no friend of mine. It's a terrible position, and besides, it requires living in Albany, which is small-town life at its worst. ~ Ed Koch

But I knew the way the people in the town thought about things. They always had some time left over from their life to bother about other people and what they did. They thought they had to get together to help other people out, like the time they got together about the woman who let a colored man borrow her car and told her the best place for her was up north with all the other nigger lovers, and the time they got the veterans with overseas wives out. If you were different from anybody in town, you had to get out. That's why everybody was so much alike. The way they talked, what they did, what they liked, what they hated. If somebody got to hate something and he was the right person, everybody had to hate it too, or people began to hate the ones who didn't hate it. They used to tell us in school to think for yourself, but you couldn't do that in the town. You had to think what your father thought all his life, and that was what everybody thought. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Sleepovers and dance parties and those talks we would have until three in the morning that would make us feel lousy the next day because we'd slept like hell but also feel good because the talks were like blood transfusions, moments of realness and hope that were pinpricks of light in the dark fabric of small-town life. ~ Gayle Forman

There are aspects of small town life that I really like - the routine nature of it, the idea of people knowing you and your likes and dislikes. ~ Cress Williams

Dogwood Blues by Brenda Sutton Rose is a masterful work of classic small-town fiction. ~ Janice Daugharty

I paint; I'm a woman but I don't paint china. The first time I got a canvas I felt free. Art is overreaction to life. I love these early drawings; they show my innocent beginnings in a small town. Life is a sentence
you live it out. Maybe these portraits jump out at you too much. People like things that conform. ~ Alice Neel

Well sue me for staring. I'd be willing to scrub away my shame on his washboard abs. ~ Tia Giacalone

J.J. and I came from a world where success was measured by how many degrees you had. J.J.'s employees came from a world where it was measured by the size of your subwoofer. ~ Paul Jury

Every town has its stories. Stories that have been told so many times by so many different people they've worked themselves into the collective consciousness as truth. ~ Jessi Kirby

In a sense, the farmer was the looniest speculator in a nation overrun with them. He was wagering he would master this fathomlessly intricate global game, pay off his many debts, and come out with enough extra to play another round. On top of that, he was betting on the kindness of Mother Nature, always supremely risky. But the farmer had no choice if he hoped to sustain himself and a way of life, the family farm. Instead, he was drawn into a kind of social suicide. The family farm and the whole network of small-town life that it patronized were being washed away into the rivers of capital and credit that flowed toward the railroads, banks, and commodity exchanges, toward the granaries, wholesalers, and numerous other intermediaries that stood between the farmer and the world market. Disappearing into all the reservoirs of capital accumulation, the family farm increasingly remained a privileged way of life only in sentimental memory.

Perversely the dynamic Lincoln had described as the pathway out of dependency - spending a few years earning wages, saving up, buying a competency, and finally hiring others - now operated in reverse. Starting out as independent farmers, families then slipped inexorably downward, first mortgaging the homestead, then failing under intense pressure to support that mortgage (they called themselves "mortgage slaves") and falling into tenancy - or into sharecropping if in the South - and finally ending where Lincoln's story began, as dispos ~ Steve Fraser

It wasn't as if she'd thought it through or anything, how what a person wanted wasn't always what they needed, and what a person needed might be the last thing they could ever want. ~ Shannon Celebi

Oh no, honey. Lots of women go through it early. Why, there was this woman over in Georgia who was only thirty-six-years-old and one day she got in her car and drove right up the stairs to the county courthouse, rolled down her window, and tossed her mother's head that she had just chopped off in her kitchen at a State policeman and hollered, "Here! This is what you wanted," and drove right back down the courthouse stairs. Now that's what an early menopause will do for you if you're not careful. ~ Fannie Flagg

I was brought up by a single mom in a poor town in Arkansas and while some aspects of small-town life were really positive - like the fact that everyone there is really sweet and hospitable - there is also this close-minded mentality, and that naturally made me want to rebel. ~ Beth Ditto

You're kind of... distracting.

Am I?

Yes. In the best way. ~ Tia Giacalone

In this town to know three languages is an unnecessary luxury. It's not even a luxury, but a sort of unnecessary addition, like a sixth finger. We have a great deal of superfluous knowledge. ~ Anton Chekhov

The people feel and look the same, like they've settled here even though they know there's something more-something better-just beyond where they are.
Small-town life. ~ Courtney Summers

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

Everybody's always doing the same old things
you know, doing unto others before they can do unto you. ~ Michael Lee West

One thing about living in a small town, I knew everybody and everybody knew me. ~ Anna Nicole Smith

One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city
as I once did for a couple of years. ~ Edward Abbey

Man, Duke and I work our fannies off. We don't eat expensive dinners out. We don't go to the mvies or buy our clothes anywhere but Kmart
our biggest treat is taking the kids to Walmart on Friday nights, having a fast food hamburger and doing the grocery shopping. ~ Lori Copeland

I always had a curiosity about Texas. I had a curiosity about small-town life, although, granted, Odessa's not a tiny town. ~ H. G. Bissinger

Over the slow pass of winters and summers, Amanda had grown to understand the cycles that made up small-town life. She knew that fewer tourists meant easier work for the staff, but fewer tips for the servers, and less chance of picking up extra hours. A busy summer kept everyone hopping and the tills full, but it also shifted the steady pace of life, tugging it into a frenetic rate. ~ Danika Stone

Is it your conviction that small-town life, centered on church, tradition, and fear of God, is our best bulwark against murder and mayhem? Well, think again. As Europe became more urban, cosmopolitan, commercial, industrialized, and secular, it got safer and safer. And that brings us back to the ideas of Norbert Elias, the only theory left standing. Elias ~ Steven Pinker

I lived a fairly average, anonymous small-town life till I got the idea to do Nine Inch Nails. Then I locked myself in a studio for a year, and then got off the tour bus two years after that, and I didn't know who I'd turned into. ~ Trent Reznor

I had a small-town life - I worked at the local McDonald's for three years. I'm not sure why they kept me: I am something of a daydreamer and a dawdler, so they would only let me be the 'friendly voice' that greeted you when you entered the restaurant. ~ Rachel McAdams

Lately he'd been seen going out less and less, becoming that strangest of animals in a small town: a loner. ~ Kristin Hannah

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

Small towns in remote corners of the world are really quaint, unless you don't fit into them. Then they're just small. ~ Christopher Barzak

I shook my head. "it's not about living in a city."
It wasn't. Back then, it wasn't just getting away. It was about not coming back. It wasn't just the size and sensibility of this place that made in unbearable, but its pull - the weird magnetism that could sap your ambition, clip your wings, leave you inert and fascinated and sinking ever deeper into the choking quicksand of small-town life. ~ Kat Rosenfield

Thus looked at from outside, these guests
--in this dead-and-alive dining room, of this dead-and-alive house, of this dead-and-alive street, of this dead-and-alive little town--in grey, dead winter of the deadliest part of the most deadly war in history--thus seen from a detached point of view, they presented an extraordinary spectacle. ~ Patrick Hamilton

I spent a college semester in a small town in Italy - and that is where I truly tasted food for the first time. ~ Alton Brown

Tyler almost came off the bed when his teeth nibbled a spot. When had that become an erogenous zone? "I don't recall you ever doing that before?"
"I've had a few years to study."
"Not the best time to bring up other women."
"Books." He reassured her. "Long, lonely hours at the library...."
"If you learned that from a book, I'm calling Lilah to have her send the author flowers! ~ Mary J. Williams

A girl had to do what a girl had to do and it looked as if this girl's immediate future included chicken Caesar salad, chocolate cake, and Cary Grant. ~ Leslie Meier

You could grow up in Germany in the postwar years without ever meeting a Jewish person. There were small communities in Frankfurt or Berlin, but in a provincial town in south Germany, Jewish people didn't exist. ~ W.G. Sebald

Dance...even when you're alone; it makes you feel good. ~ Wahletta Hale

On a June day, a young woman in a summer dress steps off a Chicago-bound bus into a small midwestern town. She doesn't intend to stay. She is just passing through. Yet her stopping here has a reason and it is part of a story that you will never forget. ~ Danielle Steel

One springs to mind: one of our very first gigs in a small East Texas town was not well promoted. At least, that was our conclusion. After the band loaded in and the curtain opened, we realized there was exactly one paying customer in the audience. We kind of made the best of it playing through the first set, took a break and bought him a Coke and then went on to perform for the remainder of the night. It wasn't exactly a catastrophe but it certainly stands as legendary. ~ Billy Gibbons

Small town people assume you are a friend if you simply remember their names. ~ Randal Marlin

Social media requires that business leaders start thinking like small-town shop owners. This means taking the long view and avoiding short-term benchmarks to gauge progress. It means allowing the personality, heart and soul of the people who run all levels of the business to show. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

When I was three years old I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and ordinary life until I was ten. ~ Mary MacLane

I grew up in a very small town in Florida, like, 7,000 people. ~ Miles Teller

Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long. ~ Louis L'Amour

Even I was increasingly unclear about where I'd been, and which time I'd been in: so I had to explain myself to myself! It was for myself that I needed a justification ... but these would no longer have been stories describing the life of The People I lived among ... they were no longer legal stories. They were stories of the refuse, the refusal of this People! They were cast-aside stories, found only in the troubling places outside town. ~ Wolfgang Hilbig

They say people from small towns have big dreams and that pretty much describes me. I had big dreams growing up and I'm still a dreamer. ~ Clay Guida

He sauntered across the kitchen, six feet of male hotness and charm, heading in her direction like a drone missile locked on a target. ~ Melissa McClone

My father was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo. He broke his arm at the elbow when he was 14, and they amputated it. ~ Roald Dahl

He is like a superhero, practicing living a normal life before starting his career as a defender of libraries, books, and the all-important art of reading. When elections come, and the town realizes the threat it is facing, he will fight for what is good and right in the world, and protect us from disaster. ~ Alice Ozma

Our family life, before figure skating turned it upside down, seemed normal. Our town of Riverside, Connecticut, was part of Greenwich, and we had the advantage of their wonderful community, with great beaches and beautiful parks. ~ Dorothy Hamill

Any deviation from the ordinary course of life in this quiet town was enough to stop all progress in it. ~ Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

Perhaps not passionate but comfortable. We could have gone on like that forever and then you came, the rambling man, with all these expatriate philosophies that we've outgrown ourselves over the past 20 years. This is really not our problem, Dick. You're leading a ghost town life, infecting everyone who comes near you with a ghost disease. Take it back, Dick. We don't need it. ~ Chris Kraus

My dad grew up in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, desperate to get to London. I grew up in London, so I don't know what it's like to yearn for the big city from a small town. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

I had wasted my life in the pursuit of a career, romance, financial independence and the best heels in town when it seems I could have done more for my self esteem with a .38 calibre handgun ~ Tyne O'Connell

Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, 'neighborhood' is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense. ~ Jane Jacobs

What would you do without me?" he asked one night. We were tangled in the silky sheets of his gigantic bed. My heart was still pounding as I came down from the high of what we'd just done, and he wasn't helping matters by putting his lips so close to my ear.
"Live a happy… happy life," I murmured. "I might even… be an optimist… if you weren't around."
"Liar." He bit my earlobe playfully. "You'd be absolutely miserable. Admit it, Duffy. I'm the wind beneath your wings."
I bit my lip, but I still couldn't hold back the laughter-and just as I was finally catching my breath, too. "You just referenced Bette Midler… in bed. I'm starting to question your sexuality, Wesley."
Wesley looked at me with a defiant glint in his eye. "Oh, really?" He grinned before moving his mouth back to my ear and whispering, "We both know that my manhood has never been in question… I think you're just changing the subject because you know it's true. I'm the light of your life."
"You…" I struggled for words as Wesley pressed his mouth into the crook of my neck. The tip of his tongue moved down to my shoulder and made my brain get all fuzzy. How was I supposed to argue under these conditions? "You wish. I'm just using you, remember?"
His laughter was muffled against my skin. "That's amusing," he said, his lips still grazing my collarbone. "Because I'm pretty sure your ex is out of town by now." One of his hands slid between my knees. "Yet you're still here, aren't you?" His f ~ Kody Keplinger

So invite me in."
Now that way lay trouble. "What are you, a vampire that needs an invitation?"
"Worse. I'm a Sweet. ~ Avery Flynn

[Thoreau's] famous night in jail took place about halfway through his stay in the cabin on Emerson's woodlot at Walden Pond. His two-year stint in the small cabin he built himself is often portrayed as a monastic retreat from the world of human affairs into the world of nautre, though he went back to town to eat with and talk to friends and family and to pick up money doing odd jobs that didn't fit into Walden's narrative. He went to jail both because the town jailer ran into him while he was getting his shoe mended and because he felt passionately enough about national affairs to refuse to pay his tax. To be in the woods was not to be out of society or politics. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I swung around downtown and slowed down to miss a solitary drunk emerging blindly from the Tripoli bar and out upon the street in a sort of gangling somnambulistic trot, pursued on his way by the hollow roar of the juke box from the ghastly lit and empty bar. 'Sunstroke,' I murmured absently. 'Simply a crazed victim of the midnight sun.' As I parked my mud-spattered Coupe alongside the Miners' State Bank, across from my office over the dime store, I reflected that there were few more forlorn and lonely sounds than the midnight wail of a jukebox in a deserted small town, those raucous proclamations of joy and fun where, instead, there dwelt only fatigue and hangover and boredom. To me the wavering hoot of an owl sounded utterly gay by comparison. ~ Robert Traver

There are ten thousand people in the United States in a persistent vegetative state. Just enough to start a small town. Think of them as veggie-burghers. ~ George Carlin

Don't take yourself too seriously. Take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don't worry. Worry your ass off. Have iron-clad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you alive and alert! Believe you are the baddest ass in town – and [that] you suck! It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn't drive you crazy, it will make you strong. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it's all we have – and then remember it's only rock' n' roll. ~ Bruce Springsteen

We were on a family holiday to Cyprus to visit my aunt and uncle. My uncle Andrew was then the brigadier to all the British forces on the island, and as such a senior military figure I am sure he must have dreaded us coming to town.
After a few days holed up in the garrison my uncle innocently suggested that maybe we would enjoy a trip to the mountains. He already knew the answer that my father and I would give. We were in.
The Troodos Mountains are a small range of snowy peaks in the center of the island, and the soldiers posted to Cyprus use them to ski and train in. There are a couple of ski runs, but the majority of the peaks in winter are wild and unspoiled.
In other words, they are ripe for an adventure.
Dad and I borrowed two sets of army skis and boots from the garrison up in the hills and spent a great afternoon together skiing down the couple of designated runs. But designated runs can also be quite boring. We both looked at each other and suggested a quick off-piste detour.
It was all game…age eleven.
It wasn't very far into this between-the-trees deep-powder detour that the weather, dramatically, and very suddenly, took a turn for the worse.
A mountain mist rolled in, reducing visibility to almost zero. We stopped to try and get, or guess, our directions back to the piste, but our guess was wrong, and very soon we both realized we were lost. (Or temporarily geographically challenged, as I have learned to call it.)
Dad and I ~ Bear Grylls

That's the thing about young love in a small town - it never dies. ~ Corinne Michaels

A red neon sign flickered dimly, buzzed like a dying insect, as they passed. ~ Ray Bradbury

I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots - written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements - and found that they called themselves Gush Emunim or - it sounded just as bad in English - 'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they took the land because god had given it to them from time immemorial. In the noisome town of Hebron, where all of life is focused on a supposedly sacred boneyard in a dank local cave, one of the world's less pretty sights is that of supposed yeshivah students toting submachine guns and humbling the Arab inhabitants. When I asked one of these charmers where he got his legal authority to be a squatter, he flung his hand, index finger outstretched, toward the sky. ~ Christopher Hitchens

How was Savannah supposed to pretend this glamorous life was what she'd always known? She was from a slummy neighborhood in a town outside San Francisco. These people were going to see right through her. ~ Michelle Madow

I kept saying that I'd never live in L.A., and I didn't think I would. But that's where the work is, and I ended up making a lot of friends there, and my old friends moved out to Los Angeles too. And also, I think when you're famous, its hard to live in a small town. ~ John Cusack

Well, I started out down a dirty road Started out all alone And the sun went down as I crossed the hill And the town lit up, the world got still I'm learning to fly but I ain't got wings Coming down is the hardest thing Well, the good ol' days may not return And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn I'm learning to fly but I ain't got wings Coming down is the hardest thing Well, some say life will beat you down Break your heart, steal your crown So I've started out for God knows where I guess I'll know when I get there I'm learning to fly around the clouds But what goes up must come down ~ Tom Petty

I was fighting drowsiness when they finally emerged and started riding southward, again across the hills. I stared after them until my eyes watered. They kept disappearing beyond the hills but then eventually reappeared, each time getting smaller and smaller. Then they disappeared for a long time: another village or town. I made myself wait and watch. Again I was trying not to nod off when I saw a second line appear on the crest of a hill directly west of me, on the other lip of the valley.
The urge to sleep fled. I watched the line--it was a long one this time, with tiny bright dots at the front that indicated banners--descend into the town.
The banners meant the commander. Was the Marquis still with him, or had he finally gotten bored and gone back to the silk-and-velvet life in Athanarel?
"You might contemplate the purpose of a court…" You brainless, twaddling idiot, I thought scornfully. I wished he were before me. I wished I could personally flout him and his busy searchers, and make him look like the fool he was. And watch the reaction, and walk away laughing.
While I was indulging my fulminating imaginings, the long line emerged again, much more quickly than the previous one had. Delight suffused me: They had obviously discovered that the previous group had been there, and had probably decided that the place was therefore safe.
Excellent. Then that was where I would go. ~ Sherwood Smith

Is this Molly?" she asked. Gabby didn't bother to hide her surprise. Living in a small town still took some getting used to. "Yeah. I'm Gabby Holland." "Nice to meet you. I'm Terri, by the way. What a beautiful dog." "Thank you." "We were wondering when you'd get here. You have to get back to work, right?" She grabbed a clipboard. "Let me go ahead and get you set up in a room. You can do the paperwork there. That way, the vet can see you right away. It shouldn't be long. He's almost done." "Great," Gabby said. "I really appreciate ~ Nicholas Sparks

I got a little bit of a sense for the subculture, which is the equivalent of any subculture, really. The stakes are high, even if you live in a small town. It's like the annual bass fishing contests, or whatever it is. The stakes are always absurdly high, and this is no different. The competition at this butter carving things, from what I understand, is not that far off from what we're depicting in the movie. ~ Ty Burrell

I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace. ~ John Irving

He smoothed his fingers along her jawline and lifted her chin, kissing her gently, testing.
Lindsey went light-headed with the rush of sensation, the touch of his lips leaving her longing for more. Clutching his shirt in her fingers - napkin and all - she pulled him closer, melting into his kiss. Carden took it from tentative to tender, then parted her lips with the velvety sweep of his tongue. She matched his languid rhythm, hypnotized. He was all chocolate and caramel, creamy cool and sweet.
'Sinfully delicious'.
No doubt he was 31 flavors of trouble, but resisting him seemed impossible. ~ Tracy March

The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'
Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

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

He hates for hate's sake. There are people like that. People who have everything. Money, power, sex. When they have everything they play for more sophisticated stakes than the rest of us. There are no thrills left to that man. The sun will never rise and delight him. he will never be lost in a strange town and forced to ask his way. I can't buy him. I can't tempt him. He wants a life for a life. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying
yet in all the houses and on the streets there is peace and quiet; of the fifty thousand people who live in our town there is not one who would cry out, who would vent his indignation aloud. We see the people who go to market, eat by day, sleep by night, who babble nonsense, marry, grow old, good-naturedly drag their feet to the cemetery, but we do not see or hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is peaceful and quiet and only mute statistics protest. ~ Anton Chekhov

Like a Rolling Stone" gave me the faith that a true, unaltered, uncompromised vision could be broadcast to millions, changing minds, enlivening spirits, bringing red blood to the anemic American pop landscape and delivering a warning, a challenge that could become an essential part of the American conversation. This was music that could both stir the heart of your fellow countrymen and awaken the mind of a shy, lost fifteen-year-old in a small New Jersey town. ~ Bruce Springsteen