Small Town Quotes

“No matter what you do, someone always knew you would.”
― Ami McKay, The Birth House

“Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps. And by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“‎The simple truth is that you can understand a town. You can know and love and hate it. You can blame it, resent it, and nothing changes. In the end, you're just another part of it.”
― Brenna Yovanoff

“It's one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you're boozing with Yankee writers in Martha's Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It's something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed's drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can't go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you--they're not, don't flatter yourself, they couldn't care less--but because once you're in orbit and you return to Reed's drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha's Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.”
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

“Mr Churchill caught the end of one of the long ribbons from her bonnet, which were flying madly in the strong breeze. He toyed with it for a long while, then looked up into her eyes. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked.
“No, I don’t suppose I do,” Jane answered. Her heart started beating harder. That was a lie. Maybe her breath was catching in her throat because she was lying: she fell in love with him the moment she saw him, rescuing the poor store clerk. Or maybe it was because he was standing so close to her, just on the other end of her bonnet ribbon. She felt her cheeks growing warm, and tried to talk herself out of blushing. He was not standing any closer to her than when they danced together, or sat on the same bench at the pianoforte. Why should it fluster her that he was wrapping the end of her bonnet ribbon around his fingers like that?”
― Jeanette Watts, My Dearest Miss Fairfax

“In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts.' ("Village Ghosts")”
― W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

“Living in a small town...is like living in a large family of rather uncongenial relations. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s perfectly awful, but it’s always good for you. People in large towns are like only-children.”
― Joyce Dennys, Henrietta Sees It Through: More News from the Home Front 1942-1945

“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, Fall for Anything

“I wish I could show you the little village where I was born. It's so lovely there...I used to think it too small to spend a life in, but now I'm not so sure.”
― Mary Kelly

“He felt a little lost, after that experience. Lost as the girls on their knees. It was a never-ending story of young girls losing themselves, such that they were no longer humans with any souls or characters, but pretty girls with fat asses and nice tits.”
― Jess C Scott, Take-Out, Part 1

“Living in a small town [in India] was like living in a glass house!”
― Mallika Nawal, I'm a Woman & I'm on SALE

“Comely was the town by the curving river that they dismantled in a year's time. Beautiful was Colleton in her last spring as she flung azaleas like a girl throwing rice at a desperate wedding. In dazzling profusion, Colleton ripened in a gauze of sweet gardens and the town ached beneath a canopy of promissory fragrance.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Rain Valley newcomers pretty much fell into two groups: people running away from something and people running away from everything.”
― Kristin Hannah, Magic Hour

“Future Farmers of America. Group who take ag classes and are going to inherit the farm. Hot shit around here, they have a couple guys in every clique, and they stick together, 'cause they know they'll be seeing each other every week for the next sixty years.”
― John Barnes

“It was like hundreds of roads he'd driven over - no different - a stretch of tar, lusterless, scaley, humping toward the center. On both sides were telephone poles, tilted this way and that, up a little, down...

Billboards - down farther an increasing clutter of them. Some road signs. A tottering barn in a waste field, the Mail Pouch ad half weathered away. Other fields. A large wood - almost leafless now - the bare branches netting darkly against the sky. Then down, where the road curved away, a big white farmhouse, trees on the lawn, neat fences - and above it all, way up, a television aerial, struck by the sun, shooting out bars of glare like neon. ("Thompson")”
― George A. Zorn, Shock!

“The real core of this book is about the open secrets that can fester in a community until an outsider raises questions.”
― J. Alexander Greenwood, Pilate's Cross

“You can remember how it was, because you weren't really any different. You could believe the things that people told you, too. Their words were gospel, and you trusted them. You believed because you were sixteen…or seventeen…or eighteen. You believed because your dreams had started running up against the Line like it was a brick wall that didn't have a single crack. And you believed—most of all—because you had to. You needed to believe that someone could get out of this town, same way you needed to believe that that someone just might be you.
And you held onto that belief. You had to. You held on, and it saw you through the Run, saw you crowned the winner. And it saw you down the black road to a cleared patch of dirt in a cornfield, a spot where Jerry Ricks's Smith & Wesson took all your dreams away.”
― Norman Partridge, Dark Harvest

“in the 1970s people still referred to my mother as a Communist because she had a subscription to The Atlantic Monthly,”
― Haven Kimmel

“As usual, small towns like this were full of those who needed entertainment and whilst money was difficult to earn, the philosophy of giving the people what they wanted, which Franco lived by, had paid dividends.”
― Christopher Byford, Den of Shadows

“It’s like you once said. To be yours, was, is, and forever will be the greatest love story. Because dying in love with you never made me feel more alive.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“Never rid me of your smile again, Ezra West. It’s fucking beautiful.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“I wasn’t looking for you when I came here but you found me, Iris. And I’m going to hold on as long as I possibly can.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“[...] That our love was meant to transcend time. But I reminded you that it did. That no matter what happened to me, our love with still be alive. In our children. In their children. In the letters I wrote and in the roots of the home we grew together. My love for you
wasn’t going to fade because my life was. It would only grow stronger and will continue to live on forever.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“I’d never forgive myself if he were to die tomorrow and that he didn’t know I loved him, Ezra. He’s not perfect but once upon a time, he showed up and I can’t expect you to understand because you’ve known him for only for the time he wasn’t his best but I love him. I love him more than his mistakes, and while it hurts when he’s not there for me
anymore, I still love him. I can’t just let him go. I’d be damned living my life knowing that I hadn’t even tried.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“Ezra, you can’t let things like guilt, fear, anger, and grief be the narrative of your life. Because the thing is, the world keeps spinning and you’re going to be left behind in your own miserable sorrow. Loss is hard. It’s difficult. We do not always win, but when we do, we cherish those wins. You cannot be afraid to live just because you’re scared of losing. You only live once, Ezra. Cherish its
highs and its lows. Don’t be scared to live it. Don’t let fear take over you like it once did me.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“Maggie’s my whole heart but Iris, baby, you’re my soul.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“You might not see it but you’re strong, Ezra. Maybe not every day, but you are strong. And with everything that life will and continues to
throw at you, I promise, you only get stronger.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“You’re not damned, Ezra. In my eyes, you couldn’t be more beautiful.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“Losing someone, it’s not all sadness. Grief…it’s a difficult thing but it’s more than just pain and misery. In a way, it’s a display of love. Grief is an echo of the love and joy that a person brought to your life. Even when
they’re gone, the moments shared with them still live. They still live within you.”
― Monica Lu, Damned and Beautiful

“Sometimes it takes a big dream to wake up a small town.”
― Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky