Town Quotes - page 48
When marine officers called on me at Palma, they remarked on the clean roads, the punctual trams and so on. 'Why', they exclaimed, 'business as usual - and you say there's killing going on? what nonsense!' They didn't realise that any tradesman who closed down, closed down at his peril. They didn't know that the relatives of the executed were not allowed to go into mourning. How can you expect the outside appearance of a town to be affected, just because the staff of its prisons is double, treble, ten times, a hundred times what it was? The discreet slaughter of fifteen or twenty wretched people per day, will not prevent tramways from running to schedule, cafés from being full, or churches resounding with the Te Deum.
Georges Bernanos
Take away a man's actual sense of manhood - which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children - and you've got to give them something else. And they did.This hideous religion that's all over the country - these huge church-malls - that's what substitutes for these lost towns. But that's not a town. That's a cult. A town is diverse, in a real way, not in this fake way we have now. A community is a butcher and a doctor, a minister, a town troublemaker. A "community" is not a bunch of people united by some grievance. That's just self-righteousness - incredibly dangerous and antidemocratic. People have become so rigid; their opinions seem to them like themselves. When that happens (and it has happened) people can't change their minds. If you are identified by your opinions - if that is the very basis of yourself - how can you change your mind?
Fran Lebowitz
As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.
Julie Burchill
Roger: I think the best show is every night. I don't know every night we pretty much have the best show. We don't really have bad shows. The only thing that would contribute to a bad show is if nobody showed up. But, people do show up - so I can't really say. We did this tour in Australia and it was like a.. we were playing way out in Perth - you know, like in the middle of nowhere, the most remote city on the planet! But, we had a day off before that, so our booking agent got us to play at this tiny, tiny town north of Perth. It was a tiny club show, tiny PA, no baracade, like less then 200 kids and it was completely insaine! It was awesome! And then the next night we were playing in Perth and it was like 700 kids but the show just wasn't as awesome, you know? So it doesn't really ever matter where it is. I don't know. It wasn't a bad show! (laughs)
Roger Manganelli
