Quotes about town
page 2

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

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

An American and France (1936)

Home, Country

“It rained toads the day the White Council came to town.”

Jim Butcher book Summer Knight

Source: Summer Knight

“I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

“NOW, MY BRETHREN!" Poseidon's voice was so loud I wasn't sure if I was hearing it from the smoke image or from all the way across town. "STRIKE FOR OLYMPUS!”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Way

“The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Source: 'Salem's Lot

Secret, Housing

“I think you ought to let me take poor Tessa into town to get some new clothes. Otherwise, the first time she takes a deep breath, that dress will fall right off her."
Will looked interested. "I think she should try that out now and see what happens.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Thinking, Time, Clothes

“I started after him… and the clown looked back. I saw Its eyes, and all at once I understood who It was."
"Who was it, Don?" Harold Gardner asked softly.
"It was Derry," Don Hagarty said. "It was this town.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

“College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Life, Parent, Time, Night

“Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.”

Wallace Stegner book Angle of Repose

Source: Angle of Repose

People

“Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love, Sadness, Angels, Way

“People who stay in the same town with the same friends for their entire lives never get a chance to find out who they can really be, because they will always be considered as who they were.”

Lisa Unger book Fragile

Source: Fragile

People, Chance

“No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Reality

“He sounds like Jesus. Except rich and sexy.”
“Watch it, Meg. In this town joking about Jesus could get you shot. You’ve never seen so many of the faithful who’re armed.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Call Me Irresistible

Faith

“Looks like it's time to liven up this dead little town!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug)”

D.J. MacHale book The Reality Bug

Source: The Reality Bug

Reality, Time, Dead

“It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town… he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Aphrodite strikes again, huh? You're gonna be the best-dressed warrior in town, beauty queen.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Beauty

“Just remember that you're on my list, Marcone. Soon as I get done with all the other evils in this town, you won't be the lesser of them anymore."

Marcone stared at me with half-lidded eyes and said, "Eek.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

Evil

“In the town live witches nine: three in worsted, three in rags, and three in velvet fine…”

Celia Rees (1949) English author

Source: Witch Child

“In a Town like Twin Peaks noone is innocent”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

World, Nature, Knowledge

“Let me make sure I have this straight. The cavalry just now rode into town and it's a Czech Gypsy porn-star zombie killer. Have I got that right?”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Kill the Dead

Star

“Falling tears in my heart,
Falling rain on the town.
Why this long ache,
A knife in my heart.”

Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) French poet

Il pleure dans mon cœur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur?
"Il pleur dans mon cœur" line 1, from Romances sans paroles (1874); Sorrell p. 69
Source: One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition

Tear, Heart

“A real Christian is the one who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

“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 book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

Life

“People fear anyone who differs from what is considered normal, and in a small town the idea of normal can be as narrow as the streets.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: The Back Door of Midnight

People, Fear, Idea

“It runs in the family. And don't expect me to be ashamed. Yankees lock away loony relatives, but down here, we prop 'em up on parade floats and march 'em through the middle of town.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Ain't She Sweet

Family

“I am a little man and this is a little town, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame.”

John Steinbeck book The Moon Is Down

Source: The Moon Is Down

Men

“In this whole screwed up town, you're the only thing that's always been right to me," He whispered. "I love you, Claire" said Shane.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Variant: Shane talking to Claire -

"In this whole screwed up town, you're the only thing that's always been right to me," He whispered. "I love you, Claire
Source: Lord of Misrule

Love

“Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Variant: Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
Source: America for Me (1909), Lines 9-12.

Dreams, Home, Flowers, Study

“Clary curled up on the ground seeing in front of her not the shell of a destroyed town but the eyes of the brother and the sister that she would never have.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Sister

“Soon you give up, don't look for her anymore, either in the town or at night or in the daytime.
Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.”

Marguerite Duras book The Malady of Death

Source: The Malady of Death

Love, Way, Night

“It isn’t about being at the same school or the same town or even the same room. It’s about being together. Love is a choice you make.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Night Road

Love, School

“If a man ordered a beer milkshake he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

Beer

“Isabelle chewed thoughtfully on her straw. 'That new lead singer they have is hot. Is he single? I'd like to ridearound town like a bad, bad pony”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Peace

“I am the Executioner. Murder someone in my town, and I’m the one that you get to see. Once.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Incubus Dreams

Source: Incubus Dreams

“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“Walls, towns, rules, and day-to-day life doesn't make us civilized… That's organization and ritual. Civilization lives in our hearts and heads or it doesn't exist at all.”

Jonathan Maberry book Dust & Decay

Source: Dust & Decay

Life, Heart

“The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'

Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Idea, Happiness

“He reached out and lightly touched her hair. There’s no way, he thought. I’m sunk. And my heart hasn’t beat the same since she walked into town.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Virgin River

Way, Heart

“Had she been in town, the two of them would have spent most of the day together, and she didn't want that. Then again, deep down, it was exactly what she wanted, leaving her more confused that she'd been in years.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

“Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Home

“Okay, first thing tomorrow we hit the streets around Taccone's place. Somebody saw something.'

'I got it covered.'

'The DiMarcos might be in town.'

'Actually, they're in jail.'

'All seven of them?'

Hale shrugged. 'It was an interesting October.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

“Talk. I'll just wait' shall I? Because my mission to save this town is of no importance whatsoever next to your girl talk."- Myrnin
"Oh, shut up, you medieval drama queen" - Claire”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Girl, Waiting

“and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

People, Disease, Way, Communication

“I'd been in love with her for years. I never left this suburban town. I didn't go to university. I went to Audrey.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Love, Universe

“… he was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he had left, yet does not say 'The town is near,' but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges.”

Thomas Wolfe book Look Homeward, Angel

Source: Look Homeward, Angel

Distant

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

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Thinking

“Looking back, it seemed like it should have been harder to lose someone, or have them lose you, especially when they were in the same state, only a few towns over.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“Larry is back in town… The wedding is set for October. Tammy is threatening to have me in the wedding. Some friends they are.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Cerulean Sins

Source: Cerulean Sins

Wedding

“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“An ugly, lovely town… crawling, sprawling… by the side of a long and splendid curving shore. This sea-town was my world.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Love, World, Sea

“I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Man in Black · First public performance (17 February 1971) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t51MHUENlAQ Song lyrics, Man in Black (1971) Source: The Essential Johnny Cash

Time

“I was filled with dread at the thought my mind had skipped town and left me behind to pay the rent." --Dexter”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“A town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you. It's the kind of place that leaves a mark.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Hate, People

“It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange y el señor Norrell

People, Thinking, Clothes

“I still don't get it" Coach Hedge muttered as they roamed the centre aisle. "They named a whole town after Leo's table?"
"I think the town was here first, Coach" Nico said.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Thinking

“When I die, nieces, I want to be cremated, my ashes taken up in a bush plane and sprinkled onto the people in town below. Let them think my body is snowflakes, sticking in their hair and on their shoulders like dandruff.”

Joseph Boyden book Through Black Spruce

Source: Through Black Spruce

People, Thinking

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

Laurie Notaro American writer

Source: There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble

Personality

“… to look at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Dreams, Star

“How strong is the love of the country in all indwellers of towns!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Love, Strong, Country

“Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men.”

John Knowles book A Separate Peace

Gene, on the war activities around Devon.
Source: A Separate Peace (1959), P. 89

Men, Children, World

“There had to be one man in town independent enough to sass the banker!”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

“The Hindus and idol-worshippers had agreed to pay the money for toleration (zar-i zimmiya) and had consented to the poll-tax (jizya) in return for which they and their families enjoyed security. These people now erected new idol-temples in the city and the environs in opposition to the Law of the Prophet which declares that such temples are not to be tolerated. Under divine guidance I destroyed these edifices and I killed those leaders of infidelity who seduced others into error, and the lower orders I subjected to stripes and chastisement, until this abuse was entirely abolished. The following is an instance:- In the village of Maluh there is a tank which they call kund (tank). Here they had built idol-temples and on certain days the Hindus were accustomed to proceed thither on horseback, and wearing arms. Their women and children also went out in palankins and carts. There they assembled in thousands and performed idol-worship' When intelligence of this came to my ears my religious feelings prompted me at once to put a stop to this scandal and offence to the religion of Islam. On the day of the assembly I went there in person and I ordered that the leaders of these people and the promoters of this abomination should be put to death. I forbade the infliction of any severe punishments on Hindus in general, but I destroyed their idol-temples, and instead thereof raised mosques. I founded two flourishing towns (kasba), one called Tughlikpur, the other Salarpur. Where infidels and idolaters worshipped idols, Musulmans now, by God's mercy, perform their devotions to the true God. Praises of God and the summons to prayer are now heard there, and that place which was formerly the home of infidels has become the habitation of the faithful, who there repeat their creed and offer up their praises to God…..'Information was brought to me that some Hindus had erected a new idol temple in the village of Salihpur, and were performing worship to their idols. I sent some persons there to destroy the idol temple, and put a stop to their pernicious incitements to error.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi and Environs , Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 380-81
Quotes from the Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi

Death, Women, Money, God

“There was no city, no town, no village, no wood, where the temples of the gods were unbroken. When Sureshavari, varaha and others were broken, the world trembled, but not so the mind of the wicked king. He forgot his kingly duties and took delight day and night in breaking images.”

Sikandar Butshikan

Jonraj: Rajtarangini

God, World, Night

“He listened with the mild demeanour of a man who had waited eight years for his town council to draw up a specification for emergency repairs.”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

Waiting, Drawing

“Once again we see Islam self-detonate (if you'll pardon the expression) and show once again why it's about as welcome on this planet as an asteroid. Once again we see thousands of Islamic nutcases take time out from beating up their wives to show their sensitive side. How? By smashing up the towns they live in, egged on by clerical ignoramuses whose motives are even lower than the literacy level of their followers. And once again we in the civilised world are being urged to censor ourselves out of respect for a religion that violates the human rights of half the people on the planet and that doubles as a political ideology indistinguishable from Nazism. It would be funny if it wasn't so obscene.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"A Word To Rioting Muslims" (20 September 2012) http://youtube.com/watch?v=GCXHPKhRCVg 2012

People, World, Religion, Motivation

“You know, I'm still in awe of movie stars-to me they're just not human. Guess it's because I'm from a small town. I wonder if I'll ever get over it?”

Leigh Snowden (1929–1982) American actress

How Leigh Snowden Broke into Movies http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1956/06/03/page/328/article/how-leigh-snowden-broke-into-movies#text (June 3, 1956)

Star

“Desolate and dreary as the little town was in the world of today, it was infinitely more liveable than the same town of nearly two centuries before. There had been much progress in how to do things. It was regrettable that there was less progress in knowledge of things worth doing.”

Murray Leinster (1896–1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Time Tunnel (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 59).

World, Knowledge

“…there appeared to me to have grown up under the present Government a system of what I called, in regard to the public expenditure, making things pleasant all round. That means going from town to town, granting what this community wants, granting what that community wants, granting what the other community wants, and leaving out of sight that huge public which unfortunately has not got the voices and the advocates ready always to defend it against these local and particular claims, but of which it is our highest boast that we seek to be the advocates and the champions.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Leigh, Lancashire (20 October 1868), quoted in The Times (21 October 1868), p. 11.
1860s

Communication, Appearance

“The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of _____; let us call it Barchester. Were we to name Wells or Salisbury, Exeter, Hereford, or Gloucester, it might be presumed that something personal was intended; and as this tale will refer mainly to the cathedral dignitaries of the of the town in question, we are anxious that no personality may be suspected.”

Anthony Trollope book The Warden

Source: The Warden (1855), Ch. 1, first lines

Question, Personality

“The gipsy tents are on the down,
The gipsy girls are here;
And it's O to be off and away from the town
With a gipsy for my dear!”

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) British poet

Gipsy Love, st. 1.

Girl

“Climbing uphill, one dollar bill, this town is far.”

John Doe (1954) American singer, songwriter, actor, poet, guitarist and bass player

Song lyrics, Dim Stars, Bright Sky (2002), This Far

“I could scarcely keep from laughing at this scrupulous manner of waging war. I cited the European example as a much more forceful policy. A monarch is careful not to overlook any advantage for victory. She had some questions about that: "Tell me," she said, "do your princes have no other pretext for war than might makes right?"
"Yes," I answered, "the justice of their cause."
"Why, then," she continued, "do they not choose to be reconciled by impartial judges? And if it is determined that both sides are in the right, then why not maintain the status quo? Or why not play a game of gin rummy for the town or province they're arguing over? But no, while they cause the death of four million men who are better than they, they stay in their strategy rooms making light of the way the poor fellows are being massacred. But I'm wrong to criticize the valour of your brave men. It's important to die for one's country when it means being the subject of a king who wears a ruffled collar or a pleated one."”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Death, Men, War, Justice

“The school was nothing but reminiscence — of an Italian hill town, a French abbey, an English academy, the different sources improbably but convincingly melded into a fantasy about the classic sites of Europe as imagined by exiles from cold peripheral lands, nostalgia about somebody else's past.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Six (p. 145).

School, Imagination, Nostalgia, Past

“Dutifully I thumbed the rides, hopped the B & Os and the Great Northerns, balled the lithe small-town girls in the band shells of their hometown parks, held the job as field hand and day laborer and soda jerk, saw the crude spectacles of American landscape slide past me as I lay in an open boxcar and drank cheap red wine; and if I didn't, I might as well have.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Jerk, Girl, Wine, Past

“I didn't like the trade. Santurce is close to my home town and I like the fans there. They good to me and cheer me all the time. I may not go back. I may work in Pittsburgh.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Reacting to the sale of his erstwhile winter ball team, Santurce, and his subsequent trade to San Juan; as quoted in "Roberto Does Better When He's Ailing" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rEQjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ak4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7048%2C256258 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Saturday, March 2, 1957), p. 6 Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1957</big>

Home, Time

“Until last year, although this town was barely fifty miles from Denver, the road had been bad and only a handful of visitors had chanced on it. The increasing tendency for people to take mountain vacations, however, since the sea had become too filthy to be tolerable, could not be ignored. The road now was excellent and the area had exploded.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “SNOW JOB”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

People, Mountain, Chance, Sea

“In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

My Little Town, written with Simon Garfunkle
Song lyrics, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975)

God

“You think people was meaner then than they are now? the deputy said.
The old man was looking out at the flooded town. No, he said, I don't. I think people are the same from the day God first made one.”

Cormac McCarthy book Child of God

Source: Child of God (1973), p.158

God, People, Thinking

“America really has no Left party. We have a center-right party -- which I would call what the Democrats are now -- and then we have the Republicans, a party that drove the Crazy Bus straight into Nut Town.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Source: Interview with the Oxford Union http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPb1VNt2EOo (25 May 2015)

“It's really splendid, my dear. Are you going to bring it into town?”

Fenella Fielding (1927–2018) English actress

To a fellow actress who was showing off her new house in Wandsworth Interview: Independent, Sunday 24 February 2008 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-lady-vanishes-what-ever-happened-to-fenella-fielding-785265.html

“But the conventional narrative is lumpy, a story that glosses what passes for quiescence to focus on "events": the appearance of Lewis and Clark and [Father Jean Pierre] DeSmut, the removal of the native Salish people, the arrival of the railroads, irrigation and logging and town-building, booms in sheep, busts in apples. Settlement, local politics, participation in the nation's wars, schemes to make money. And now the resources are tourism and real estate based on scenery and an amenity lifestyle in a mountain paradise. These seem to be what we think of as history.”

Dan Flores (1948) American historian

The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (2003)

Money, War, People, History

“Imagine a monarch, holding personal command of his army, disbanding his regiments, sacred with a hundred years of history—and handing his towns over to Anarchists and Democracy.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Reaction to the Tsar's invitation (August 1898) to the Hague Conference of 1899, quoted in Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War (London: Pimlico, 2004), pp. 429-430
1890s

Democracy, Imagination, History, Personality

“I thought: should I be worried? I was under arrest. In a town where I'd never been before. Apparently for murder. But I knew two things. First, they couldn't prove something had happened if it hadn't happened. And second, I hadn't killed anybody. Not in their town, and not for a long time, anyway.”

Lee Child book Killing Floor

Killing Floor, Ch. 1.

Time

“Rumors that Moscow is helping me must be due to the fact that while I was Chief of Police of the Town of Sakhalin-Ula I used to dine twice a year with the Soviet officials. I can swear that no foreigners have given or are giving me guns, munitions, supplies or money! I want the League of Nations to fulfill its duty. I want it to force the Japanese to withdraw from Northern Manchuria. If I am forced to abandon Tsitsihar I intend to retire into the back country.”

Ma Zhanshan (1885–1950) Chinese politician

[CHINA-JAPAN: Hero Ma, TIME, 23 November 1931, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742656-2,00.html]

Money, Help, Country

“I started Live Action with some school friends of mine when I was 15 years old because I knew of no other group in my hometown of San Jose that was educating my peers about abortion as a human rights abuse, about the dignity of children in the womb, and about the risks of abortion to women. I felt passionately that if people knew the facts, they would become pro-life. I also was convicted: I had been given life, I knew how precious life was, but there were children close to me, in my own city, who were not protected.”

Lila Rose (1988) American anti-abortion activist

An Interview with Anti-Abortion Activist Lila Rose http://www.dailywire.com/news/1193/interview-anti-abortion-activist-lila-rose-pardes-seleh (November 18, 2015)

Life, Women, Children, People

“It was the realisation of a lifelong ambition to be the MP for my home town. It was by no means the end of a journey, but rather the beginning of a new chapter both for me and for the people of Batley and Spen.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Column: Jo Cox – After a hard day’s night, the real work starts http://www.batleynews.co.uk/news/local/column-jo-cox-after-a-hard-day-s-night-the-real-work-starts-1-7264438 (16 May 2015)

People, Home

“Next they passed the Sacred Mountain and the highlands where the Mossynoeci live in the mossynes or wooden houses from which they take their name. These people have their own ideas of what is right and proper. What we do as a rule openly in town or market-place they do at home; and what we do in the privacy of our houses they do out of doors in the open street, and nobody thinks the worst of them. Even the sexual act puts no one to blush in this community. On the contrary, like swine in the fields, they lie down on the ground in promiscuous intercourse and are not at all disconcerted by the presence of others. Then again, their king sits in the loftiest hut of all to dispense justice to his numerous subjects. But if the poor man happens to make a mistake in his findings, they lock him up and give him nothing to eat for the rest of the day.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book II. Onward to Colchis, Lines 1015–1029

People, Lie, Justice, Home

“A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Inside the Suit, a Man!," The New York Times (1986-11-05)

“To those who work outside Washington, I would send a special message. At times it may be frustrating when it seems that the head office is thousands of miles away and the message is not getting through. But if I may, I'm going to issue a verbal Executive order: We're going to listen, because the heart of our government is not here in Washington, it's in every county office, every town, every city across this land. Wherever the people of America are, that's where the heart of our government is.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

George Bush: "Remarks to Members of the Senior Executive Service," January 26, 1989. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16628&st Address to the Senior Executive Service (1989)

People, Time, Heart

“You've got to be a very clever people to win a big war and to rule half the world -- but the Japanese didn't behave is clever people. In the first few weeks of conquering any town, they would hold marching exercises as part of their campaign to terrorize residents. They marched six to eight to twelve abreast, chanting Japanese martial songs and stamping on the ground in an exaggerated manner.”

Robert Kuok (1923) Malaysian businessman

Cap 3 "Under the Japanese Heel"

War, People, World, Exercises

“At last the bourgeois has a theatre of his own in which he really feels at home. In every little town there is a modest building, and in the big cities those new palaces of stone or marble whose remains still survive.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter III. Greece and Rome

Feeling, Home

“The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, "Write from experience, and experience only," I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!"”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)

Life, People, Education, Way

“The widespread intimidation of the population provided the essential precondition for a process that was in train all over Germany in the period from February to July 1933… The Nazi takeover of the federated states provided a key component in this process… At the same time as the state governments were being overthrown, local Nazis, backed by squads of armed stormtroopers and SS men, were occupying town halls, terrorizing mayors and councils into resigning, and replacing them with their own nominees.”

Richard J. Evans (1947) British historian

Source: The Coming of the Third Reich (2003), p. 381

Men, Time, Training

“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.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Home, Birthday

“…but he distinctly remembered standing at the house door one summer morning in a passionate outburst of rebellion against going to school. Naturally his mother was the immediate victim of his rage; that is what mothers are for, and boys also; but in this case the boy had his mother at unfair disadvantage, for she was a guest, and had no means of enforcing obedience. Henry showed a certain tactical ability by refusing to start, and he met all efforts at compulsion by successful, though too vehement protest. He was in fair way to win, and was holding his own, with sufficient energy, at the bottom of the long staircase which led up to the door of the President's library, when the door opened, and the old man slowly came down. Putting on his hat, he took the boy's hand without a word, and walked with him, paralyzed by awe, up the road to the town. After the first moments of consternation at this interference in a domestic dispute, the boy reflected that an old gentleman close on eighty would never trouble himself to walk near a mile on a hot summer morning over a shadeless road to take a boy to school, and that it would be strange if a lad imbued with the passion of freedom could not find a corner to dodge around, somewhere before reaching the school door. Then and always, the boy insisted that this reasoning justified his apparent submission; but the old man did not stop, and the boy saw all his strategical points turned, one after another, until he found himself seated inside the school, and obviously the centre of curious if not malevolent criticism. Not till then did the President release his hand and depart.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

School, Way, Boy, Nature

“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!' … 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'.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Carshalton and Banstead Young Conservatives at Carshalton Hall (15 February 1971), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 202-203.
1970s

People, Truth, Fear, Feeling

“With… small-town life… there are hundreds of thousands… who are not content. The more intelligent young people… flee to the cities… and… stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The reason, Carol insisted… is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment… the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is the slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Life, God, People, World

“I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything. I was in the workshop and watched him. So as a child so-called art was not my view. That was, in my opinion, my father's job. But I liked to watch him; he comes, as my mother also, from a very craftsman's background. My father's parents were carpenters. They were also builders partly. They were painters. And several of them were very, active in the theater and all such nonsense, you know. On my mother's side there was much more heavy craft. They were blacksmiths. They made a specialty horse shoes and nails for them... So, as a child, my main fun was to watch others working. I loved to walk to the neighboring carpenter's place and up to the neighboring shoemaker in my home town.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Love, Art, Shoe, Home

Quotes about town page 2

Quotes about town
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