Town Quotes

“Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

“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

“Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

“Somewhere, things must be beautiful and vivid. Somewhere else, life has to be beautiful and vivid and rich. Not like this muted palette -a pale blue bedroom, washed out sunny sky, dull green yellow brown of the fields. Here, I know ever twist of every road, every blade of grass, every face in this town, and I am suffocating.”
― Lisa Ann Sandell, A Map of the Known World

“I risk a grin at the thought. Because there's a part of me that likes that idea. Get out of town and never look back.”
― Daisy Whitney, When You Were Here

“Most folks don't have but a few days to a week's worth of food in their houses at any given time. When they run out, they'll have to forage. Only the fools will forage in town. The smart ones will look on the outskirts.”
― Edward M. Wolfe, Hell on Ice

“You're a good man," Fang said. "You're the last good man in this whole town. All the good that could be squeezed out of this forsaken place was used to make you. That's why you're so small, my friend: there just wasn't that much left." Fang laughed. "and that's why you can see us, you know, and nobody else can. You see everybody, even that lumberjack.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“Will you be all right?" she asked

How could I be?

Would you be all right, I felt like screaming, if you'd just watched your family taken away, watched your entire town taken away, to be murdered. I'll never be alright.”
― Carol Matas, Greater Than Angels

“Pretty cities are filled by evil people.”
― Jordan Hoechlin

“delete that old version of me in your head, it's expired.”
― Jordan Hoechlin

“I had a girlfriend that would go out on the town for a ‘girls night out’ and would roll in after sunrise, claiming that she could not get a taxi home. I dumped her after several occurrences of it!”
― Steven Magee

“My girlfriend would tell me she was flying out of town to a pop concert with her friends for the weekend. She did go to the concert, but it later emerged it was an excuse to meet up with her secret lover!”
― Steven Magee

“My girlfriend would tell me she was flying out of town to a work conference with her coworkers. She did go to the conference, but it later emerged it was an excuse to meet up with her secret lover!”
― Steven Magee

“Rest in peace: Historic Lahaina town.”
― Steven Magee

“The August 2023 wildfire caused extreme devastation in the historic Lahaina town.”
― Steven Magee

“The 911 emergency service was non-functional during the wildfire that destroyed the historic Lahaina town.”
― Steven Magee

“I would never have thought a hurricane that was 500 miles away could destroy historic Lahaina town.”
― Steven Magee

“Historic Lahaina town demonstrated that high winds and fire are a fatal combination.”
― Steven Magee

“The historic Lahaina town joined the Hawaiian spirits in August 2023.”
― Steven Magee

“During the first day of the loss of Lahaina town, the government was saying only six people had died. As the day went on, it emerged from witnesses that the death toll was far higher.”
― Steven Magee

“8th August 2023: Historic Lahaina town joined the Hawaiian spiritual world.”
― Steven Magee

“I am interested to see how Hawaii’s ‘War On The Homeless’ is going to work out on Maui after the loss of historic Lahaina town.”
― Steven Magee

“Is Zürich actually a city or a town?
What is a city? What is a town? I ask back.
A type of human settlement? Of a certain size.
What is a human settlement?
Seriously?
Yeah… seriously… maybe it’s easiest to define things first before talking about them.”
― Ryan Gelpke, 2018: Our Summer of Creeping Boredom and Beautiful Shimmering

“Balar, a black mass of buildings with steeply pitched slate roofs and ornate gables of dark wood reaching into the cold air like the legs of a dead spider. It is a town with a history that reached back into the mists of history — a history won by the sword and the pike and paid for in blood.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“Best cities are filled by evil people.”
― Jordan Hoechlin

“I once visited a town that was built around a wood pulp mill. The town had a very strange smell and I developed a sore throat for the rest of the day. I never went back.”
― Steven Magee

“There once was a town.
It was a quaint little town, in a quiet valley, where life moved at the pace of snails and the only road in was the only way out, too. There was a candy store that sold the sweetest honey taffy you ever tasted, and a garden store that grew exotic, beautiful blooms year-round. The local café was named after a possum that tormented its owner for years, and the chef there made the best honey French toast in the Northeast. There was a bar where the bartender always knew your name, and always served your burgers slightly burnt, though the local hot sauce always disguised the taste. If you wanted to stay the weekend, you could check-in at the new bed-and-breakfast in town--- just as soon as its renovations were finished, and just a pleasant hike up Honeybee Trail was a waterfall there, rumor had it, if you made a wish underneath it, the wish would come true. There was a drugstore, a grocer, a jewelry store that was open only when Mercury was in of retrograde---
And, oh, there was a bookstore.
It was tucked into an unassuming corner of an old brick building fitted with a labyrinthine maze of shelves stocked with hundreds of books. In the back corner was a reading space with a fireplace, and chairs so cozy you could sink into them for hours while you read. The rafters were filled with glass chimes that, when the sunlight came in through the top windows, would send dapples of colors flooding across the stacks of books, painting them in rainbows. A family of starlings roosted in the eaves, and sang different songs every morning, in time with the tolls of the clock tower.
The town was quiet in that cozy, sleepy way that if you closed your eyes, you could almost hear the valley breathe as wind crept through it, between the buildings, and was sighed out again.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“A writer does not belong to one village, one city, one town, or one country. A writer belongs to the world.”
― Avijeet Das

“Over the years, Roland had grown accustomed to the quiet atmosphere of Dr. Gray’s office. Despite being just off the main street, there wasn’t much commotion during the day. Some nights one might hear a few of drunks cackling outside as they wandered home from the pub, but aside from that the street remained undisturbed.”
― Ardin Patterson, Feral

“The town seemed to be full of oddities. Like the garden of strange snow statues, carved to look like little round men with jaunty black hats and carrots for their noses. And the leafy green bouquets with white berries tied up in bows hanging over archways all around town, often with two people smooching beneath them, as if the leaves were sprinkled with some kind of love potion. And then there was the large rotating contraption of wooden animals spinning round and round as jaunty music played from a hidden speaker. Even stranger, several children were riding on these animals, squealing in delight as they spun.
Looks like fun, Sally couldn't help thinking.”
― Mari Mancusi, Sally's Lament