There are a million tiny weird towns. You never know what you're going to get into if you drive an hour into the wild.

L.A. is fun, but it feels like one of those towns in the north of Scotland where there's an oil rig just off the coast and whether or not you work for the oil rig, everyone is connected to it.

'Rocket Boys,' for one reason or the other, just happened to strike a chord across country and across world, maybe because it's set in a little coal-mining town. That's why NASA likes it - most of the engineers come from towns very similar.

Even coming from small towns, the biggest dreams are possible.

I write about people in small towns; I don't write about people living in big cities. My kind of storytelling depends upon people that have time to talk to each other.

There is a comfortable feeling in small towns. It is salubrious.

A more courageous empathy is needed in our country to see the struggles of people from factory towns to farm towns to city towns who can't even afford the rent in their cities anymore because costs are going so high.

When news of the crash came, probably a lot of people in small towns and farms across America felt a sense of grim satisfaction that the sinners had finally been punished for their wicked ways.

People going into the cities for the opportunities and the towns are getting older, no young people.

Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority, they are proud and inflexibly territorial.

When the world changed, people were different. Towns closed, cities were boarded up, communities abandoned, their governments collapsed. They seemed to have no qualms that were obvious to you or me about walking away from what they called a useless pile of rubbish, and never looking back.

This President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America. This President puts his faith in government. We put our faith in the American people.

Oswestry's a bit in the middle of nowhere - quite tough, and quite English, in the way border towns are.

I was very much a child of Tumblr. I did a lot of my personal education into what intersectional feminism is on Tumblr. The Internet is a great tool for children who are raised in very narrow-minded towns.

As much as I'd like to think and as much as people mistakenly think my audience is blue collar people in the heart of America, my audience is basically, in the States, an NPR audience. I play college towns in the summer because that's who comes to see me.

When I go to farms or little towns, I am always surprised at the discontent I find. And New York, too often, has looked across the sea toward Europe. And all of us who turn our eyes away from what we have are missing life.

Growing up in Georgia, I used to think people up north or out west were so different. They're really not. They're just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It's that way everywhere.

Small towns are the worst for getting recognised.

Small towns are so rich.

I always loved smokestack industry, and I love towns or cities that have grown up around factories.