small towns Quotes

“I think about my childhood, the life I lived on Delano Island, that place was so small. Everyone knew me, not because I was special or anything just because everyone knew everyone, and the claustrophobia of that, I can’t tell you. I just wanted some privacy. For as long as I could remember I just wanted to get out, and then I got to Toronto and no one knew me. Toronto felt like freedom.”

“Look all over the world and you won’t find friendlier people or fresher air or sweeter drinking water.” […] “I could go to Denver at triple the salary, but I’ve got five kids and I figure there’s no better place to raise kids than right here.”

“For the majority of Holcomb’s population, having lived for seven weeks amid unwholesome rumors, general mistrust, and suspicion, appeared to feel disappointed at being told that the murderer was not someone among themselves.”

“But that’s impossible. Can you imagine Mr. Clutter missing church? Just to sleep?”

“For, feeling it their duty, a Christian task, these men had volunteered to clean certain of the fourteen rooms in the main house.”

“If [the killer] wasn’t him, maybe it was you. Or somebody across the street. All the neighbors are rattlesnakes. Varmints looking for a chance to slam the door in your face. It’s the same the whole world over. You know that.”

“The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains.”

“Not only young virgins of that town, but grey-bearded men also, were often in haste to conjecture how a new acquaintance might be wrought into their purposes, contented with very vague knowledge as to the way in which life had been shaping him for their instrumentality. Middlemarch, in fact, counted on swallowing Lydgate and assimilating him very comfortably.”

“We both sighed. We were still kids, so we liked everything to stay the same. Now the whole town seemed to be up to something.”

“You must picture the consternation of our little town, hitherto so tranquil, and now, out of the blue, shaken to its core, like a quite healthy man who all of a sudden feels his temperature shoot up and the blood seething like wildfire in his veins.”

“Then I knew we were getting to Grandma’s town. It was sound asleep in the hour before dawn. We slowed past the depot, and now we were coming to Grandma’s, the last house in town. It was lit up like a jack-o’-lantern.”

“Thus the first thing that plague brought to our town was exile.”

“Grandma’s house was the last one in town. Next to the row of glads was a woven-wire fence, and on the other side of that a cornfield. On the first nights I’d always lie up in bed, listening to the husky whisper of the dry August corn in the fields. Then on the second night I wouldn’t hear anything.”

“The Coffee Pot was where people went to loaf, talk tall, and swap gossip. Mary Alice and I were of some interest when we dropped by because we were kin of Mrs. Dowdel’s, who never set foot in the place. She said she liked to keep herself to herself, which was uphill work in a town like that.”

“There’s no private matters in this town, Merle,” Grandma said. “Everybody’s private business is public property.” “Yes, and you’ve stuck your nose in ours!” Mrs. Stubbs said, speaking up sharp. “You got that Eubanks gal upstairs this minute.”

“By now I knew that not everybody around here called ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunt’ was necessarily your uncle or aunt.”

“You had to study hard to see any expression at all, but it was a look I was coming to know. She appeared pretty satisfied at the way things had turned out. And she’d returned law and order to the town she claimed she didn’t give two hoots about.”

“This morning the words save me a place in hell had been scrawled in black paint along the water tank’s perimeter. The sight of it had made my morning, but the graffiti had already been covered up. Stuff like that wasn’t tolerated in Raynesville.”

“The monotony of the place could choke you like one of those stupid ties you have to wear to a wedding or funeral. But no matter how hard you dragged at your collar, the place sucked the breath out of you.”

“The girls put their names in a bag and each guy pulls out a name. The guy who picks the blank is the emcee. He takes the girls out into the forest, hides them, and ties them to a chair. Their eyes and mouths are covered. The guys then have to go out and find their partner, untie her, and carry her back to the bus. The last couple back loses the Game, and they must face the consequences.”

“Once I’d realized how this town spread gossip, rumors, and blame like soft butter on hot toast, I’d convinced myself I had to get out of here fast after high school.”

“The village itself can be seen only from the corner of the eye. It is difficult to find but, once found, you will never lose it.”

“The people in a small place cannot give an exact account, a complete account, of themselves. The people in a small place cannot give an exact account, a complete account of events.”

“In a small place, people cultivate small events. The small event is isolated, blown up, turned over and over, and then absorbed into the everyday.”

“It’s a small town, Jazz. I keep my ear to the ground.”

“Yeah, but you’re from this small town, eh. The Department’s crazy about helping kids from places like this get a fair go. They’ll help you with things they wouldn’t do for black kids living in the city.”

A collection of five short stories set in the small towns of northern England, exploring complex relationships and rare understandings among the young and old.

I found her Dad’s reaction especially fascinating. It was also nice that Miss Brady’s role in the story was staggered – it allowed Helen’s family time to evolve with each new revelation and made the plot progression feel more organic.

“A ten-year-old boy adjusts to the changes in his life after his mother dies. Like absently, compulsively poking a sore, the reverberations of a death in the family, significantly a suicide, emerge among cameos of small town and small fry life in Thicket.”

“The Moffats tells about four young children and their mother who live in a small town in Connecticut. Their adventures are based on Estes’ memories of her childhood and focus on a working-class, single-parent American family during World War I.”