“Nowadays when a poet with one privately printed book can have his next three years taken care of by a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and the Prix de Rome, it is hard to remember what chances the poet took in that small-town world, how precariously hand-to-mouth his existence was. And yet in one way the old days were better; [Vachel] Lindsay after a while, by luck and skill, got far more readers than any poet could get today.” WorldWayYearsBookHardHandsCareTodayRememberThreeNextChanceExistenceTakenPoetReaderSkillsMouthsTownsLuckOne WayReviewsRomeThree YearsSmall TownFellowshipPrintedOld DaysLuck And SkillPrinted Books Author:Randall Jarrell
“Readers have no doubt noticed how seldom builders live in houses of their own construction. You will find a town or village expanding in all directions with their masterpieces of modernity in the way of houses and bungalows; but the builder himself you will usually find living nearer the heart of things, snugly and comfortably housed in some more substantial, if less convenient, building of less recent date.” IfsWayHeartHouseDoubtBuildingReaderTownsNo DoubtVillageConstructionMasterpieceExpandingConvenientModernityBuilder Book:Lark Rise to Candleford Source: Lark Rise to Candleford
“The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.” HumansMightSimpleInterestingAttentionHistoryReaderTownsPatientRuinsMannersNarrativeMisfortunesVagueComplaintsRepetitionFatigueExhibitsTediousRoman Empire Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“I think that setting a novel in a small town taps into a sense of nostalgia among readers. People tend to believe life is different in small towns, and frankly, it is different.” PeopleThinkingBelieveDifferentLife IsNovelReaderTownsNostalgiaSettingSettingsSmall Town Author:Nicholas Sparks
“I've always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate.” LittlesReaderMy FamilyTownsConsideringAvidLittle Towns Author:John Malkovich
“One of the things that's amazing about reading the private writing of these folks is that they enthusiastically describe things which we have now seen, and which are widely regarded as unappealing. They'll write, "It's going to be beautiful, we're going to have a town of 1,000 stone buildings that are all identical." And we as modern readers think, we've seen that; that's bad Soviet architecture or a public housing project. Nobody fantasizes about living there.” ThinkingWritingBeautifulReadingModernBuildingReaderProjectsStonesTownsFolksArchitectureSovietHousingIdenticalPublic Housing Author:Christine Jennings