The talks were like blood transfusions, moments of realness and hope that were pinpricks of light in the dark fabric of small-town life.

When small towns find they cannot harm the strangest of their members, when eccentrics show resilience, they are eventually embraced and even cherished.

There was not a lot of room for someone like me, who kept the gossip mill running like a hamster wheel.

He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.

It wasn’t as if she’d thought it through or anything, how what a person wanted wasn’t always what they needed, and what a person needed might be the last thing they could ever want.

And somewhereout there,in the river ofaddicts, alcoholics,wife beaters,doormats,overeducated legalized thieves,fascist police,and bitter rivalries—someone told meit’s a good city,and I don’t knowwhat’s more frightening

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...

One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living...

My life might have been so different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded. And had I not been born in Bad Munstereifel. If we had lived in the city —...

A scattering of pinpoint lights shows up in the blackness ahead. A town or village straddling the highway. The indicator on the speedometer begins to lose ground. The man glances in his mirror at the...

But people in a small town tend to do a lot of talking, even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.