“The place where I come from is a small town.
They think so small;
They use small words
-But not me.
I'm smarter than that.
I worked it out.
I've been stretching my mouth
To let those big words come right out.”

—  Peter Gabriel

Big Time
Song lyrics, So (1986)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The place where I come from is a small town. They think so small; They use small words -But not me. I'm smarter tha…" by Peter Gabriel?
Peter Gabriel photo
Peter Gabriel 56
English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian 1950

Related quotes

Eddie Izzard photo

“So, I thought, it's not working. So I threw my breasts out of the window of my Lamborghini, in my mind … no, I threw the breasts out of the window of my Ford Fiesta, in my mind. Actually, I threw them out over the handlebars of my bicycle [mouthing the words] in my mind. And they hit a small child, who ran, "Mum, mum, mum … I've been attacked by … jellyfish!"”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Sexie (2003)

“Out of night has come the day
Out of night, our small earth.
Our words drift away.
Our words journey
to find those who will listen.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Haifaa al-Mansour photo

“Coming from that small town and watching films made me like travel in my space and appreciate being part of a bigger world and exercise emotions that you don't get to exercise when you are coming from a small town.”

Haifaa al-Mansour (1974) Saudi Arabian film director

Cinema Cafe at 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute - 31 Jan 2020, at 17 Min 50 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwwCbpp_GkI

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

On being informed that Faulkner had said that Hemingway "had never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary." Pt. 1, Ch. 4
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Noel Gallagher photo

“I've waited for a thousand years / For you to come and blow me out my mind
The world around us makes me feel so small
If you can't hear me call / Then I can't say, Lyla / Heaven help you catch me if I fall”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Lyla
Don't Believe the Truth (2005)

Stig Dagerman photo

“I'm tired of living, tired of living here in this land of small dogs, small feelings, small pleasures, small thoughts. One has to be satisfied, but I don't want to be satisfied. I won't be satisfied like a little dog, there's nothing more repulsive that small dogs when they come home frightened and satisfied from their small doggy adventures. I myself have been a big dog, but I won't be a big dog either, even if it is better to be a big dog than a little one. There's nothing between being a big dog and being a little one.I have been a big dog because I have deceived you all. I have also been a little dog because I have deceived myself. In the land of small dogs we all deceives ourselves, we all dream of small doggy adventures, but we are afraid of the greatest adventure of all. The small dogs have a panic-stricken horror of living a pure life, for the only adventure which is not small, because they think the only things worth living for are the moderately dirty ones. In the land of small dogs indecency is worse than immorality, people there don't know that only one thing is immoral: consciously wanting to hurt somebody. In the land of small dogs, therefore passive evil is more respected than active goodness.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 257

John Banville photo

“My present study - a word that always makes me uneasy, I am not sure why - is a small apartment in a huge, anonymous, quadrilateral block in Dublin city centre. My window, the one I do not look out of, gives on to a courtyard where no one ever goes, and where the silence is day-long and almost pastoral. When I first began to come here to work, a dozen years ago, I used to shut my door on entering each morning and put the chain on. The place is clean, or cleanish, and, yes, well lighted. Here I am unassailable. Or so I like to imagine.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Writers' rooms: John Banville (2007)

Don DeLillo photo

“I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read…I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

'Exile on Main Street: Don DeLillo's Undisclosed Underworld' by David Remnick, The New Yorker, September 15, 1997

Bill Hicks photo

“Where have I been? I've been on my flying saucer tour. Which means like flying saucers I too have been appearing in small southern towns in front of a handful of hillbillies lately…no one doubts my existence.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Sane Man (1989)

Stephen Fry photo

“My first words, as I was being born… I looked up at my mother and said, "that's the last time I'm coming out one of those."”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

On being gay
Stephen Fry actually admitted this was a quote from a friend, not himself. (Moab Is My Washpot)
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

Related topics