“ It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is t… Christopher Hitchens
“ The Sussex lanes were very lovely in the autumn . . . spendthrift gold and glory of the year-end . . . earth scents and the sky winds and all the magic of the countryside which is ordained for the hea… Monica Baldwin
“ But these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion... (Afterward) Edith Wharton
“ In the country, especially, there are such a lot of entertaining things. I can walk over everybody's land, and look at everybody's view, and dabble in everybody's brook; and enjoy it just as much as t… Jean Webster
“ Here had lived an elder race, to which we look back with disquietude. The country which we visit at week-ends was really a home to it, and the graver sides of life, the deaths, the partings, the yearn… E.M. Forster
“ It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside. Arthur Conan Doyle
“ From then on, it was even twistier B-roads through a country so photgenically rural that I half expected to meet Bilbo Baggins around the next corner - providing he'd taken to driving a Nissan Micra. Ben Aaronovitch
“ Our stomachs live in towns," said Mma Potokwani, patting the front of her dress. 'That is where the work is. Our stomachs know that. But our hearts are usually somewhere else. Alexander McCall Smith
“ Gone. We were out in the country and everything slowed down into rolling hills covered with snow. There were trees, but no leaves, and I could not remember seeing anything so white and clean. Winter i… Gary Paulsen
“ Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city. Neil Gaiman
“ Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he'd say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was s… Jeannette Walls
“ We get so used to the gregarious nature of our towns and villages that we forget how crowded our existence has become. Fennel Hudson
“ We live, all of us, in sprung rhythm. Even in cities, folk stir without knowing it to the surge in the blood that is the surge and urgency of season. In being born, we have taken seisin of the natural… G.M.W. Wemyss
“ Élodie, who was rising fifteen, lifted her anaemic, puffy, virginal face with its wispy hair; she was so thin-blooded that good country air seemed only to make her more sickly. Emile Zola
“ She was too honest, too natural for this frightened man; too remote from his tidy laws. She was, after all, a country girl; disordered, hysterical, loving. She was muddled and mischievous as a chimney… Laurie Lee
“ Townsfolk have no conception of the peace that mother nature bestows, and as long as that peace is unfound the spirit must seek to quench its thirst with ephemeral novelties. And what is more natural… Halldór Laxness
