Quotes about town
page 10

“In South Asia, relatively few pre-Indo-Aryan place-names survive in the North; however, many more in central and southern India. Indo-Aryan place-names are generally not very old, since the towns themselves are relatively late.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

p 104
Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“Today, I will have to tell my children, along with all the children of Palestinian Arab towns in the country, that the state has declared that it does not want us here. … It has passed a law of Jewish supremacy and told us that we will always be second-class citizens.”

Ayman Odeh (1975) Israeli lawyer and member of the Knesset

About the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, as quoted in Israel 'nation-state' law prompts criticism around the world, including from U.S. Jewish groups https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-nation-state-law-prompts-criticism-around-world-n893036 (July 20, 2018) by Paul Goldman, Lawahez Jabari and F. Brinley Bruton, NBC News.

Children, Law, Country

“Satin grew up in a small town in Minnesota and felt an instinctive sort of rebellion, but unlike Bob Dylan, he did not play the guitar and so had no way of expressing it.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Wakefield, Dan (March 1968). "Supernation at Peace and War." The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 221, no. 3, p. 42.
Overall

Way

“He is the president of the Janata Dal (S) (JD-S) political party in India and currently a member of Parliament (MP) representing his home town Hassan district in Karnataka. His party mainly runs on a plank of social justice and has substantial support in South-central Karnataka.”

H. D. Deve Gowda (1933) Indian politician

Profile in: Profile: Haradanahalli Dodde Deve Gowda http://www.indianpoliticians.com/profile/23/ 4 December 2008

Home, Support, Justice

“For this reason neighborhoods should be American and a combination of the best of all the races that live in them. It is here that the school can become the conference center and the council chamber. It is the one American institution to be found in every town free, neutral, and powerful. During the daytime it has the children who can interpret it; during the evening it may have the parents who need it for their community expression. From the schoolhouse come the beliefs that living conditions should be decent, that laws should be enforced for all alike, that there should be no racial discriminations. From participation in neighborhood activities and in governing their own communities, the immigrant will grow into the larger responsibilities of State and nation. In order that American political ideals should be understood by him, they must be lived within his consciousness, in the small radius of his neighborhood, and in that way he must see exemplified whatever American literature, art, music, and science have to give.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

School, Law, Children, Art

“Nobody crossed him without a battle. He disliked almost everything, particularly his wife, his children, his neighbors, his church, his priest, his town, his state, his country, and the country from which he emigrated. Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the sun or the stars, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.”

John Fante book The Brotherhood of the Grape

The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977)

Hell, Country, Sun, Star

“What would you think the odds were that this town could keep that secret for this long?”

W. Mark Felt (1913–2008) Whistleblower who exposed the Watergate scandal

Benjamin C. Bradlee, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, who, along with Woodward and Bernstein, were the only ones publicly known to know the identity of "Deep Throat."

Secret, Thinking

“The first director of Hopkins didn’t get along with him so Ricketts would have to wait until he was out of town to sneak into the library with the help of some sympathetic professor.”

Ed Ricketts (1897–1948) American marine biologist

Mark Denny, DeNault Professor in Marine Science/Biomechanics. http://stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2002/novdec/features/hopkins.html

Help, Waiting

“What was once Sinclair Lewis is buried in no ground. Even in life he was fully alive only in his writing. He lives in public libraries from Maine to California, in worn copies in the bookshelves of women from small towns who, in their girlhood, imagined themselves as Carol Kennicotts, and of medical men who, as youths, were inspired by Martin Arrowsmith.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

Dorothy Thompson, his ex-wife, in "The Boy From Sauk Center" in The Atlantic (November 1960)

Imagination, Youth, Life, Women

“The disembarkation was a fucking shambles and we only took Alexandria as quick as we did to get a fucking drink somewhere, because we were near dead with the thirst…. The town was full of a lot of half-starved blacks, near-blacks you could call them, in filthy rags, raising their hands to the bloody burning heavens when they saw us come in, shouting Allah Allah and so on. Some old bints with veils on gave us fucking filthy water to drink, but filthy or not it was like elation and ecstasy and so on. There was hardly a solitary fucking thing worth having in the whole town, all half-starved goats and so on, and talk about the fucking heat and the smell. Anyway, what they called sheiks came and gave him the keys, and the officers did all right with like knives and scimitars with jewels on, but then we had to move on to Damanhur and Rahmaniya and so on, near dropping with the fucking heat….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

Water, Drink, Dead

“Every time I hit Panama, the place is exactly one month, two months, six months more nowhere, like the progress of a degenerative illness. A shift from arithmetic to geometric progressive seems to have occurred. Something ugly and ignoble and subhuman is cooking in this mongrel town of pimps and whores and recessive genes, this degraded leech on the Canal.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Two Years Later: Mexico City Return
Queer: A Novel (1985)

Whore, Time, Cooking

“San Francisco fucking rules. I am so proud of my home town for legalizing gay marriage, sending gays and lesbians down to the city by the Bay that was built on rock and roll to tie the knot.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Weblog

Marriage, Home

“When I was young, it was not thought proper for young ladies to study very conspicuously; and especially with pen in hand. Young ladies (at least in provincial towns) were expected to sit down in the parlour to sew,—during which reading aloud was permitted,—or to practice their music; but so as to be fit to receive callers, without any signs of blue‐stockingism which could be reported abroad. Jane Austen herself, the Queen of novelists, the immortal creator of Anne Elliott, Mr. Knightly, and a score or two more of unrivalled intimate friends of the whole public, was compelled by the feelings of her family to cover up her manuscripts with a large piece of muslin work, kept on the table for the purpose, whenever any genteel people came in. So it was with other young ladies, for some time after Jane Austen was in her grave; and thus my first studies in philosophy were carried on with great care and reserve.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Harriet Martineau, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, vol. 1 [1855]

Family, Study, Time, Reading

“[I]n this book... the rallies... are different... they build from day to day... and... it's led by people who are full-time... and they open offices in Washington. ...Three enlightened billionaires come to town and they say... "Hey, let's fund this"... and a brain trust.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

"How The Rats Reformed The Congress" (2018)

Books, People, Time

“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 2
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Soul, Heart, Pleasure, Joy

“It was also, they added, Very Now, which was important in a town in which an hour ago was Ancient History.”

Neil Gaiman book Smoke and Mirrors

The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories (p. 107)
Smoke and Mirrors (1998)

History

“It's really, really tough because you have to be honest with the American public and you don't want to scare the hell out of them. And then other times, in attempts to calm people down, [leaders] have had people be complacent about it. This is particularly problematic in a ‘gotcha” town like Washington.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

About the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States, quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico.

Hell, Time, People

“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

World, Travel, Parting, Exercises

“Here is your road, tyingyou to its meanings: gorge, boulder, precipice.
Telescoped down, the hard and stone-green river
cutting fast and direct into the town.”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Source: "The Road" U.S. 1 (1938), The Book of the Dead

“I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies—in great towns and great crowds. It is a plant that takes times and space and air; and London society is a huge "squash," as we elegantly call it—an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob.”

Henry James book The Awkward Age

Said by Vanderbank in Book I, ch. II.
The Awkward Age (1899)

Time, Friendship

“In English country towns, if the public houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the innkeepers to blaming the government.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Something Fresh

Something Fresh (1915)

Time, Housing, Country

“Life is not lost by dying! Life is lost
Minute by minute, day by dragging day,
In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways,
The smooth appeasing compromises of time,
Which are King Herod and King Herod's men,
Always and always. Life can be
Lost without vision but not lost by death,
Lost by not caring, willing, going on
Beyond the ragged edge of fortitude
To something more — something no man has ever seen.
You who love money, you who love yourself,
You who love bitterness, and I who loved
and lost and thought I could not love again,
And all the people of this little town,
Rise up! The loves we had were not enough.
Something is loosed to change the shaken world,
And with it we must change!”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Money, Time, Death, People

“I'm your narrator. It's my task to say
Just where and how things happen in our play,
Set the bare stage with words instead of props
And keep on talking till the curtain drops. …
It's an old task — old as the human heart,
Old as those bygone players and their art
Who, in old days when faith was nearer earth,
Played out the mystery of Jesus' birth
In hall or village green or market square
For all who chose to come and see them there,
And, if they knew that King Herod, in his crown,
Was really Wat, the cobbler of the town,
And Tom, the fool, played Abraham the Wise,
They did not care. They saw with other eyes.
The story was their own — not far away,
As real as if it happened yesterday,
Full of all awe and wonder yet so near,
A marvelous thing that could have happened here
In their own town — a star that could have blazed
On their own shepherds, leaving them amazed,
Frightened and questioning and following still
To the bare stable — and the miracle.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Narrator
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Faith, Question, Star, Heart

“So long as the figures 'now superseded' and the academic projections based upon them held sway, it was possible for politicians to shrug their shoulders. With so much of immediate and indisputable importance on their hands, why should they attend to what was forecast for the end of the century, when most of them would be not only out of office but dead and gone? … It was not for them to heed the cries of anguish from those of their own people who already saw their towns being changed, their native places turned into foreign lands, and themselves displaced as if by a systematic colonisation. For these the much vaunted compassion of the parties and politicians was not available: the parties and the politicians preferred to be busy making speeches on race relations; and if any of their number dared to tell them the truth, even less than the whole truth, about what was happening and what would happen here in England, they denounced them as racialist and turned them out of doors. They could feel safe; for they said in their hearts: 'If trouble comes, it will not be in our time; let the next generation see to it!'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

… The explosive which will blow us asunder is there and the fuse is burning, but the fuse is shorter than had been supposed. The transformation which I referred to earlier as being without even a remote parallel in our history, the occupation of the hearts of this metropolis and of towns and cities across England by a coloured population amounting to millions, this before long will be past denying. It is possible that the people of this country will, with good or ill grace, accept what they did not ask for, did not want and were not told of. My own judgment—it is a judgment which the politician has a duty to form to the best of his ability—I have not feared to give: it is—to use words I used two years and a half ago—that 'the people of England will not endure it'.
Source: Speech to the Carshalton and Banstead Young Conservatives at Carshalton Hall (15 February 1971), from Still to Decide (1972), pp. 202-203

Time, Dead, Business, People

“There is the first condition, the sine quanon. For the selfish no such advance is possible; for the unselfish such advance is certain. And in whatever life the man begins to think more of the common good than of his own individual gain, whether it be in the service of the town, of the community, of the nation, of the wider joinings of nations together, right up to the service of humanity itself, every one of those is a step towards the Path, and is preparing the man to set his feet thereon.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Selfishness, Life, Thinking, Communication

“It is the purity of a truth of which you have had only a glimpse. This is the feast, and the tiny tidbits you tasted before, back there, had made you hope for the existence of the Whole. The nameless emotion, longing, nostalgia, sense of destiny that you felt back there when you stared at the cloud layered sunset in Hawaii, when you stood quietly among the tall, waving trees in the silent forest, when a musical selection, passage, or song recalled memories of the past or brought forth a longing for which there was no associated memory, when you longed for the place where you belonged, whether city, town, country, nation, or family—these are now fulfilled. You are Home. You are where you belong. Where you always should have been.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 8. Because the Bible Tells Me So

Home, Nostalgia, Tree, Family

“I used to think that comedy came from wanting acceptance, wanting to be liked. Now I know differently. I know it's all down to fear. Fear, ladies and gentlemen, is the only true comedian in town.”

Ian Rankin (1960) Scottish crime writer

The Only True Comedian (2000)

Fear, Thinking

“For younger girls living in any small town, it can be hard to move forward and get out. You are more than capable, the only thing stopping you is you.”

Cassandra Kuzneski

Source: https://www.indianagazette.com/news/indiana-native-launches-line-of-swimwear/article_21fdcb08-1ad3-11eb-9024-072dc8b9d80e.html

Girl

“If only I had a Ferrari
Then I'd be a Ken doll and she'd be Barbie
We could ride together with the roof rolled down
With the whole town jealous of my girl and my fast car”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"I Need a Fast Car" (song). Based on "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman <br class="br"> ("I Need a Fast Car" on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC91THkQ9Hs, feat. Tracy Chapman) <br class="br">Remix albums, We Didn't Invent the Remix (2007)

Girl, Cars

“A single farmer can feed the whole town, but no one will ever notice his death. Except when they are feeling hungry again. That's the nature and ingratitude of humanity.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Nature, Death, Feeling

“Cathedral cities, market towns, ports forgotten by the sea, spas long out of fashion, all these can decay beautifully, and often their charm increases as the life ebbs out of them. Industrial towns, like steam-engines, are only even tolerable if they are in working order and puffing away.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Bk 2, Ch. 6. ii
The Good Companions (1929)

Sea, Fashion, Life

“Prostitution in towns is like the sewer in a palace; take away the sewers and the palace becomes an impure and stinking place.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Misattributed
Source: This quote, frequently attributed to Aquinas, is actually a paraphrase of a passage (itself an elaborate paraphrase of Augustine) by Ptolemy of Lucca in his continuation of an unfinished work by Aquinas. The passage from Ptolemy reads: "Thus, Augustine says that a whore acts in the world as the bilge in a ship or the sewer in a palace: 'Remove the sewer, and you will fill the palace with a stench.' Similarly, concerning the bilge, he says: 'Take away whores from the world, and you will fill it with sodomy.'" (Ptolemy of Lucca and Thomas Aquinas, On the Government of Rulers, trans. James M. Blythe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, 4. 14. 6). What Augustine actually wrote (in De ordine, 2. 4. 12) was simply: "Remove prostitutes from human affairs and you will unsettle everything on account of lusts." Only Book 1 and the first four chapters of Book 2 of On the Government of Rulers (De Regimine Principum) are by Aquinas. The rest of the work was written by Ptolemy. (It even mentions the coronation of Albert I of Hapsburg, an event that occurred in 1298, twenty-four years after Aquinas's death.) The quote comes from Book 4, which was definitely not written by Aquinas.

“I cultivate my Chinese garden in the middle of an American town…I love China with all my heart and soul, although I feel fortunate to have escaped it.”

Anchee Min (1957) Chinese-American author

Source: On the way she pays homage to China in “Anchee Min: 'If I had stayed in China, I would be dead'” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10116718/Anchee-Min-If-I-had-stayed-in-China-I-would-be-dead.html in The Telegraph (2013 Jul 4)

Soul, Heart, Love, Feeling

“A classic unspoken agreement among escapees from a small town: don’t look back, don’t be each other’s anchors, no nostalgia. I wasn’t expecting any of them to return.”

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter “Formerly, 1” (p. 53)

Nostalgia

“You have a tendency to think of wars as being fought in arenas set aside for fighting. But when you go through these farms and little towns, you realize wars are fought in people's backyards, stores, streets, and cities. It was all so very real then. It's real to me today.”

Lynn Compton book Call of Duty

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 246

War, People, Thinking, Fight

“Towns can be trusted to corrupt themselves.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Fortunatus the Pessimist (1892), Abaddon in Act I, sc. iii; p. 22.

“The best thing in our show was always our move to the next town.”

Jack Finney book From Time to Time

Source: From Time to Time (1995), Chapter 21 (p. 233)

“[on being a director] It's the best job in the picture business because when you're a director, you're God. And you know that's the best job in town.”

Burt Lancaster (1913–1994) American actor and producer

other quotes

God, Business

“Why from the plain truth should I shrink?
In woods men feel; in towns they think.
Yet, which is best? Thought, stumbling, plods
Past fallen temples, vanished gods,
Altars unincensed, fanes undecked,
Eternal systems flown or wrecked;
Through trackless centuries that grant
To the poor trudge refreshment scant,
Age after age, pants on to find
A melting mirage of the mind.
But feeling never wanders far,
Content to fare with things that are.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: At the Gate of the Convent (1885), "A Defence of English Spring", p. 58.

God, Truth, Age, Past

“I walk on the west side of town, | you walk all the other way around, | we meet in the middle of the street, | where we both stop and smile and we both show our shiny teeth.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

from Never Meet – Tarquini & Prevale <br class="br">Source: Tarquini & Prevale Never Meet https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Tarquini-Prevale/Never-Meet-Tarquini-Prevale-Italo-Mix, Musixmatch.com, July 22, 2017

Smile, Way