“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.”
“M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.”
“You know how gossip is. It's the toxic waste of small town”
“But it hadn't just been Sebastian who had been watching me. Rather, it had been tribes of merman and mermaids, who had been curious about this newcomer in town that could outswim any school of small fish.”
“Every small town that I had ever been to had had a caboose.”
“He had further narrowed his mind by a considerable amount of travel abroad, where he had again always made his way to the small hotels.”