“It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town, out on the edge of the prairie…”

“That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

“My plans are still in embryo, a town on the edge of wishful thinking.”

“Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another.”

“On my fifteenth birthday I'll run away from home, journey to a far-off town, and live in a corner of a small library. It'd take a week to go into the whole thing, all the details. So I'll just give the main point. On my fifteenth birthday I'll run away from home, journey to a far-off town, and live in a corner of a small library.”

“America is my country and Paris is my home town and it is as it has come to be.”

“Otherwise it was quiet—that eerie, not-quite-comforting quiet one finds in small towns before dawn.”

“The boat set sail upon the great river
whose swollen waters stretched to sky's edge.
Sky and waves split apart suddenly—
the district capital's thousands of homes.
Moving on, I can see the town market
and vaguely make out mulberry and hemp.
I turn to gaze back toward my homeland—
only vast floods that stretch to the clouds.”

“I thank God for this ten weeks' quiet before the end… Life has always been hurried and full of difficulty… This time of rest has been a great mercy.”

“Flow greatest like the greatest lakes / Capes on great estates, quiet water major waves”