Quotes About Small Towns

#1. I suppose more than anything, it's the way of life in this part of the country that influences my writing. In Eastern North Carolina, with the exception of Wilmington, most people live in small towns.

Nicholas Sparks

#2. Wal-Mart is going in and slaughtering [small towns] just as we once killed the buffalo.

Garrison Keillor

#3. Well, nothing ever ends well for crazy people in small towns.,

Molly D. Campbell

#4. In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#5. Small towns make up for their lack of people by having everyone be more interesting.

Doris "Granny D" Haddock

#6. In small towns, bored teenagers turn their eyes longingly to the exciting doings in the big cities, pining for urban amenities like hipster bars and farmers' markets and indie-rock festivals. Like everyone else, they want the vibrant and they will not be denied.

Thomas Frank

#7. People always describe small towns as quaint or cozy or familiar. "You know who your neighbors are," they always seemed to say. But what you won't find depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting is how cruel those same neighbors can be.

T. Torrest

#8. A manufacturing resurgence is what will give local communities and small towns across America a fighting chance for survival. Many of today's American entrepreneurs come from those very places but make their wealth elsewhere. We need to change that.

Hamdi Ulukaya

#9. There are so many people who don't know small towns exist. When I write, I want to give my readers two things: one is a sense of consolation, and two, I want to make them laugh.

Jan Karon

#10. In those small towns you come to realize how the cathedrals utterly outgrew their whole environment.

Rainer Maria Rilke

#11. I'm all about small towns. I think it's a great place to grow up.

Kacey Musgraves

#12. I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun. But I really love Durham more than any place I've ever been; some small towns can be really provincial and strangling, but Durham is the best city in the world.

John Darnielle

#13. I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do.

Lenny Bruce

#14. In small towns as well as large, good people outnumber bad people by 100 to 1. In big towns the 100 are nervous. But in small towns, it's the one.

Paul Harvey

#15. Small towns seem to appreciate things a little bit more. They're less jaded and they're more kind of authentic and more themselves and they don't care as much.

Pauly Shore

#16. 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

#17. Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes.

Mitch Albom

#18. Take a detour.
Discover small towns
and friendly faces
that don't grow along the highway.

Khang Kijarro Nguyen

#19. I had a big family - two older sisters and a younger brother. My family was like moving around a lot so I lived in a lot of small towns. My father was very restless.

Jessica Lange

#20. I enjoy small towns, I've got my friends there. I have friends in L.A. too, but I'm not much on traffic.

Jacob Lofland

#21. Thousands of cities in America are crying out for relief from the burden of illegal immigration. Small towns like mine can no longer wait for Washington.

Lou Barletta

#22. The thing is, you can't always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns.

Sarah Dessen

#23. As a kid I never had the impulse to climb anything. I think that most kids who live in small towns or rural areas outside of the city, that's what they do - climb walls, or trees, or whatever. To me, it was more dance classes and not being very boyish.

Jamie Bell

#24. The code of small towns is simple but encompassing: if many forms of craziness are allowed, many forms of cruelty are ignored. Piggy

John Irving

#25. To read the papers and to listen to the news ... one would think the country is in terrible trouble. You do not get that impression when you travel the back roads and the small towns do care about their country and wish it well.

Charles Kuralt

#26. I think small towns are the closest to heaven you can get on earth. I'm glad that some other people, my wonderful readers especially, feel the same way I do.

Diana Palmer

#27. When small towns find they cannot harm the strangest of their members, when eccentrics show resilience, they are eventually embraced and even cherished.

Louise Erdrich

#28. Hunch is your brain's way of taking a shortcut to the truth.'
'In small towns news travel at the speed of boredom'.

Carlos Luiz Zafon

#29. In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.

Stephen King

#30. I was into punk, but I didn't go whole-hog. A lot of kids who grew up in small towns that were into punk music went the "safe" way - not doing drugs, being straight edge.

Daughn Gibson

#31. Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority, they are proud and inflexibly territorial.

Paul Theroux

#32. As a 13-year-old fan of horror fiction, I hadn't seen too many cities in the literature I loved. It was always small towns, or backwoods locales, or maybe the suburbs.

Victor LaValle

#33. Death is a fact of life, no matter where you live. Taking care of the dying is a necessity everywhere. Those are not conditions exclusive to small towns.

Kent Haruf

#34. I think in small towns like this one, whether you're a man or a woman, you basically do what there is to do.

Estelle Parsons

#35. I've seen it [Australia] go from a lot of small towns to big towns, but I think it has found its identity in all this time ... it's a very special country, I could easily live here.

Suzi Quatro

#36. I grew up in small towns in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra - places like Akola, Betul, Wardha, Jhansi; I thought the rise of provincial India would be an interesting subject to tackle.

Pankaj Mishra

#37. I love New York, but am happy to be away from it. I really like small towns, with welcoming barbecue restaurants.

David Burnett

#38. His research led him to one overwhelming conclusion, published in a seminal paper in 1975: big cities nurture subcultures much more effectively than suburbs or small towns.

Steven Johnson

#39. Small towns are sometimes like that; familiarity runs high, while regard for personal space is low, if nonexistent.

Laurie Notaro

#40. Small towns have their own heartbeat, no matter how many people come or go.

Mitch Albom

#41. I've had gay friends who grew up in small towns in France who had to lie for most of their lives, even to themselves. But eventually such lies become stronger than the people, and they have to face them.

Guillaume Canet

#42. Small towns blossomed by elevators and the trains
Once every 14 miles along the prairie veins
We were born of progress, now progress will decree
That we're no longer viable, and should no long be ...
Still Standing about Canada's Prairie Elevators (The First Song album)

Phyllis Wheaton

#43. I thought people in small towns were supposed to be nice, not act like the son of Satan.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#44. The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.

Stendhal

#45. Small towns are the worst for getting recognised.

Wayne Knight

#46. What we don't talk about enough is Ohio's unique and remarkable quality of life. We are a state of cities, small towns and growing suburbs where life is affordable and destinations within reach. There is no better place to raise a family.

Bob Taft

#47. Bakersville was never going to be the same. She'd been to other small towns where the residents all thought serial killers looked like monsters, that no member of their community could hide such dark desires. Once upon a time, she'd lived in one.
And the monster there had ripped her life apart.

Elizabeth Heiter

#48. When I go home to Pennsylvania, my cousins who live in small towns and are twenty-three with kids are like 'Krysten, when are you getting married?' 'When are you having a kid?' Honestly, those aren't the most important things to me right now.

Krysten Ritter

#49. Small towns have long memories and pass their horrors down ceremonially from generation to generation.

Stephen King

#50. When I was a kid down there it was always a dream to go to a Nebraska game but when you live in those small towns you hardly ever get up to one.

Larry The Cable Guy

#51. It's true that what you find in New York is something other than America. Only small towns and small countries are self-satisfied; a real capital goes beyond its borders.

Simone De Beauvoir

#52. I write about people in small towns; I don't write about people living in big cities. My kind of storytelling depends upon people that have time to talk to each other.

Lee Smith

#53. Small towns are best for spending Christmas, I think. They catch the mood quicker and change and come alive under its spell.

Truman Capote

#54. My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.

Satyajit Ray

#55. I meet a lot of young people in the Midwest, and I saw what a difference a show like In the Life can make to their lives in some of these small towns where, you know, there are probably two gay people in the whole damn town.

Lesley Gore

#56. I did stories about unexpected encounters, back roads, small towns and ordinary folk, sometimes doing something a little extraordinary.

Charles Kuralt

#57. I have lived most of my life in small towns, and I'm in the habit of knowing and talking to everyone.

Ellen Gilchrist

#58. Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.

Richard Peck

#59. It's in every single county. It's in our cities but it's also in our wealthier suburbs. It's in our small towns. There is no place in Ohio where you can hide from drug epidemic .

Mike DeWine

#60. People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.

Richard Russo

#61. This President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America. This President puts his faith in government. We put our faith in the American people.

Mitt Romney

#62. 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

#63. The town wakes early, like it does every day; small towns need a head start if they're going to have any chance in the world.

Fredrik Backman

#64. It is interesting to be here and to see that for certain actors they have to live in a way that you think of nobody living anymore except for in small towns. They have such elaborate double lives.

Bill Condon

#65. Standup keeps me grounded and keeps me in touch. I get to go from small towns to big cities, across Canada and the U.S., and you're out there and talking to people. You get a sense of what they respond to.

Howie Mandel

#66. Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either.

Sherman Alexie

#67. We set the town on fire and burned down every house as a warning to other small towns along the river.

Knute Nelson

#68. All small towns, scandal is always simmering on the back burner, like your Aunt Cindy's baked beans.

Stephen King

#69. City and country
each has its own beauty and its own pain. Some of the smallness of small towns
cattiness, everybody knowing everybody's business
that can be challenging. And cities can be challenging, because no one can connect except electronically.

William P. Young

#70. Small towns begin with a sign. The words can be as simple as the title of a story
Welcome to Harberville, Now entering Clawson
but once you cross, you are inside that story, and all that you do will be part of its tale.

Mitch Albom

#71. I enjoy going on motorcycle trips and stopping in small towns and enjoying drinks with the locals.

George Clooney

#72. There may be no secrets in small towns, but there are no strangers either.

R.A. Mathis

#73. 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

#74. President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we're both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.

Richard M. Nixon

#75. People from small towns have to have their edges roughed up to get along in the world. But as a street reporter, you learn quickly.

Bill Kurtis

#76. Starships were settlements in the sky. Some were villages; Ultimatum was a great metropolis. And yet even Star Destroyers functioned like small towns. A big sink full of gossip - and as with small towns, the contents all tended to flow toward one person, like water to a drain.

John Jackson Miller

#77. Unfortunately, large cities don't have a monopoly on loneliness. It can be found in small towns as well. Loneliness can be found everywhere there are people.

Richard Paul Evans

#78. Growing up in Georgia, I used to think people up north or out west were so different. They're really not. They're just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It's that way everywhere.

Alan Jackson

#79. There is a comfortable feeling in small towns. It is salubrious.

Andie MacDowell

#80. But instead of that stuff you get relationships with people and neighbors that you would never get in a city. People in small towns are a lot more open.

Genevieve Gorder

#81. You get to tour some of the historic homes and listen to ghost stories."
"This is what people do in small towns?"
"We could either do that or go sit on my porch, chew some tobacco, and play banjos.

Nicholas Sparks

#82. Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away.

John Irving

#83. In Vineyard Haven, on Martha's Vineyard, mostly I love the soft collision here of harbor and shore, the subtly haunting briny quality that all small towns have when they are situated on the sea

William Styron

#84. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

Sarah Palin

#85. I'm a Midwesterner by birth, and when I traveled there, when I was young, most of the small towns were thriving, vibrant places.

Philip Caputo

#86. When news of the crash came, probably a lot of people in small towns and farms across America felt a sense of grim satisfaction that the sinners had finally been punished for their wicked ways.

Ron Chernow

#87. Hardly anyone moved to Coot Lake unless they had some kind of tie to the community. It wasn't like Coot Lake was on the Most Scenic Small Towns list.

Anonymous

#88. I think in all small towns, all kind of working class communities around the world. They are kind of similar.

Sacha Baron Cohen

#89. In the years when teenagers really need to be connected to somebody, they aren't; especially in small towns where kids are bored and look for something to get them going.

Dash Mihok

#90. One of the best ways of reducing both CO2 emissions and poverty in the South would be to strengthen the existing, decentralised demographic pattern by keeping villages and small towns alive. This would allow communities to maintain social cohesion and a closer contact with the land.

Helena Norberg-Hodge

#91. When I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I was so struck by the universality of small towns.

Tom Brokaw

#92. I was born in New York City. But my family moved when I was still an infant. Except for a year and half when we lived in Youngstown, Ohio, I grew up in small towns in Pennsylvania. I graduated from high school in Farrell, Pennsylvania.

E.L. Konigsburg

#93. In the schools of small Midwestern towns, the only aristocracies are of beauty, intelligence, and athletic prowess.

Ellen Gilchrist

#94. It's always so nerve-wracking being up there on stage. It's even harder playing in your hometown - and I have a couple of home towns - but, you're playing for all the people you knew in high school, so it causes no small degree of panic in my mind.

Nellie McKay

#95. Admittedly, they [(places in novels)] didn't all have such ridiculous names as the ones in the Piddle Valley where her father's group of parishes was centered. It would have been hard to make credible a romantic fiction set in Farleigh Piddle, Middle Piddle, Nether Piddle and Piddle Dummer.

Val McDermid

#96. Everyone needs a small-town banker. Especially in a big town.

Jane Bryant Quinn

#97. I tend to write about towns because that's what I remember best. You can put a boundary on the number of characters you insert into a small town. I tend to create a lot of characters, so this is a sort of restraint on the character building I do for a novel.

Tom Drury

#98. Wink? she thinks. Where the fuck is Wink?

Robert Jackson Bennett

#99. I don't like bad mouthing towns and just thinking that I live in such a great place. I mean, I would hate to live in a small town and have a public persona say, "That town sucks." I would really not want to hear that.

Carlos Dengler

#100. History records the large events or the general condition of society, but only an individual can put down the way of life in a small town ...

Gladys Taber