Locals Only Quotes & Sayings

Strangers complained about the stench, but the locals liked to brag that it was the sweet smell of money. — Donald Ray Pollock

He was silent for a moment, staring out the window into the rain; I imagined he was contemplating the fact that his family's presence was turning the locals into giant dogs. — Stephenie Meyer

As a callow eighteen-year-old leaving for college, I'd seen my home town as a mere launching pad for a life in worldier locals, a pale to be from rather than a place to be. But years and miles away from home could never attenuate the city's hold on my identity and the more I explored places and people far from Hampton, the more my status as one of its daughters came to mean to me. — Margot Lee Shetterly

A settlement existed here as early as the sixth century BC. The Romans built their fortress later. Known today as "Babylon" by the locals, it formed the foundation for the Coptic quarter and gave it its distinctive character. After the spread of Christianity in Egypt, the area of about one square mile became a Christian stronghold, home to some twenty churches and the world's oldest surviving Christian community. Now, many centuries later, it sat at the heart of a Muslim nation. Only five of the original churches remained, but the enclave was a time warp that also preserved the country's earliest mosque and its oldest synagogue. — Dan Eaton

Did you know that Ethiopia might have fifteen-hundred rock churches? Most are carved ou of rock outcropping. Some date back to the 13th century. Even the locals have forgotten where they are all located. Some are in caves, in the ground, and on top of tabletop mountains like Debre Damo. If the falashas wanted to hide the Ark, they would have lots of choices that were more secure than the middle of Axum. — J.J. Gainer

Buying only what you know can end in disaster. Just think about Enron's employees and business partners, the 'locals' who bought lots of its stock because they thought they were in the know. — Kenneth Fisher

Drink heavily with locals whenever possible. — Anthony Bourdain

Everywhere we walked we got plenty of attention due to the camera and sound men. The locals love to get on camera. [ ... ] I'd seen footage of Gandhi surrounded like this and always thought it was because he was very popular, but now I wonder if it was just because he had a camera crew with him. — Karl Pilkington

The best way to travel abroad is to live with the locals. — Zach Braff

The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand. — William Least Heat-Moon

[T]raveling, a local is shocked to realize that in neighboring countries locals view him as a foreigner; between villages, clans, nations, and classes there are wars, potlatches, agreements, treaties, and struggles that remove the absolute meaning from the idea of the 'other' and bring out its relativity; whether one likes it or not, individuals and groups have no choice but to recognize the reciprocity of their relation. How is it, then, that between the sexes this reciprocity has not been put forward, that one of the terms has been asserted as the only essential one, denying any relativity in regard to its correlative, defining the latter as pure alterity? Why do women not contest male sovereignty? — Simone De Beauvoir

New Rule: Since our new national position on science is, "Screw it, we prefer witchcraft," let's not just retire the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Let's drive it to one of the five stupidest States and have the locals beat it with sticks. Putting it in a museum is too dangerous. Someone could steal it, fly it into space and notice we revolve around the sun. — Bill Maher

Old man," she said. "Don't you want to prepare or something?"
"Prepare what?"
"Yourself. For death."
Siri laughed.
"Well, Bpoo. Let's see. If the Buddhists are right, I'm just on my way to the next incarnation. Unless there's a manual for how to behave correctly as a gnat I'm not sure how I'd prepare for that. If the Catholics are right, nothing short of an asbestos suit and a glass of iced water will help where I'm going. And if the communists are right, you do your best and when you're gone they put up a statue in your honor and the locals dry their laundry on it. So, if I'm going, you're the heir to today's legacy. — Colin Cotterill

Partying on the Malecon

One of the most exciting areas in Havana is the Malecon, a protective sea wall which buffers the northern edge of the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, from the Straits of Florida. Busiest during weekends, it is the most popular place to stroll and is an unrivaled meeting spot for guys and dolls. For this activity the primary party area is the corner of the Malecon and La Rampa, and for a country as poor as Cuba the Malecon offers a reasonable form of entertainment and people watching. Although there are nightclubs in Havana, spending an evening along the Malecon, is probably the best way to enjoy the pulse of Havana and offers visitors a chance to interact with friendly locals. — Hank Bracker

The tale begins well before my time. It's common knowledge, among the locals, that the woods stretching between Swinford and Corbinsdale are cursed." "Cursed," Brooke scoffed. "Ignorance and superstition are the true curses. Their remedy is education. Don't you sponsor a school on this estate, Denny?" "It's a story," Portia said. "Even schoolchildren know the difference. And they could teach you something about imagination. Your cynicism is not only tiresome, but pitiable." "You pity me? How amusing." "Pity won't get you on my list." "Really?" Brooke smirked. "It seems to have worked for Lord Merritt." Enough — Tessa Dare

I suspect that LaGuardia is an elaborate prank, and New York has a real airport nearby that only locals know about. — Dave Barry

The power of network television is amazing. I've been performing for years but have been seen on only a few episodes of this show, and people spot me in public now all the time. They say, 'Hey, aren't you on 'Nashville'?' Most locals seem to really appreciate how authentic the show is. — J. D. Souther

She froze when she thought she heard movement in a nearby copse of trees, then scanned the area. Probably just an animal. They tended to be in jungles. She turned back to the stream -
"Put your hands on your head."
Not an animal. As she slowly stood and turned, she recognized that these weren't locals. These were bad guys, three of them with machine guns aimed at her face.
In her present mood that equaled: Why, I believe I'll turn them into frogs! Just as she reached for the mirror in her pocket, they cocked their weapons.
The oldest man was clearly the leader, and his tone was deadly as he said, "Your hands on your head - or I'll put a bullet into it." He didn't have a thick accent. These must be the international narco-terrorists, the ones who made the cartel look mild. So much for the mirror's judgment.
Unless this was still better than Bowen. — Kresley Cole

Now, a month later, I sit, foggy, a similar state of mind, in a different seafood restaurant with a locals-know-every-secret bar, two happy hour martinis downed, fidgeting with my napkin below the lip of the table, and I barely hear Wendy ask me another question. She brought a bag of them tonight. — Justin Bog

Although deer season doesn't start until November in Maine, the fields of October are often alive with gunshots; the locals are shooting as many peasants as they think their families will eat. — Stephen King

Herbert, my father, was born in Britain but went out to Africa in his teens to join his father and built up an 18,000-acre ranch in what was then Northern Rhodesia, providing work for the locals. He was my hero when I was a boy. — Wilbur Smith

What we need is not more Federal government, but better local government. — Calvin Coolidge

MOST CITIES ARE designed on grids that fill them with hard angles. Not Amsterdam, which has a softness about it imparted by the watery curves of the 16th-century canals that fan out through the city. Though its gabled canal houses and narrow medieval streets give it an undeniable old-world charm, Amsterdam's thoroughly contemporary takes on arts, architecture and design show that it has modernity in a firm embrace. It's a city that invites wandering, with a tram system and a plenitude of bicycles (about as many as there are residents) that make navigating as fun as it is easy. Thanks to the locals, most of whom speak English, you'll feel instantly welcome and will be spared the indignity of trying to pronounce Dutch (don't even try). Spend as much time as possible on foot, the better to enjoy the city's theatrical quality: The huge, unshaded windows of the canal homes allow you to peer right in, testimony to the Dutch ethos of having nothing to hide. — Anonymous

Thus it went as she made her way around the biomes of Ring B. Always she found that her mother the great engineer had made some crucial intervention, finding solutions to problems that had stymied the locals. Devi had the knack of sidestepping dilemmas, Badim said when Freya mentioned this, by moving back several logical steps, and coming at the situation from some new way not yet noticed. "It's sometimes called avoiding acquiescence," Badim said. "Acquiescence means accepting the framing of a problem, and working on it from within the terms of the frame. It's a kind of mental economy, but also a kind of sloth. And Devi does not have that kind of sloth, as you know. She is always interrogating the framing of the problem. Acquiescence is definitely not her mode. — Kim Stanley Robinson

On Earth one of the things that a large proportion of the locals is most proud of is this wonderful economic system which, with a sureness and certainty so comprehensive one could almost imagine the process bears some relation to their limited and limiting notions of either thermodynamics or God, all food, comfort, energy, shelter, space, fuel and sustenance gravitates naturally and easily away from those who need it most and towards those who need it least. Indeed, those on the receiving end of such largesse are often harmed unto death by its arrival, though the effects may take years and generations to manifest themselves. — Iain M. Banks

People love to hear the brag of the local boy, because they want him to be great, but the foreigner must deny that he has any outstanding virtue - this is what will endear him to the locals. — Orson Scott Card

The best way to be GLOBAL is to be LOCAL — Alex Atala

The phenomenon of laborers staying on at the end of their contracts with big public works companies is likely the biggest single source of Chinese migration to Africa. Workers would arrive from a given locality in China and discover there was good money to be made in some corner of an Africa they had never before imagined viable. Soon, they were sending word back home about the fortunes to be made there, or the hospitality of the locals, or the wonders of the environment, or the joys of a free and relatively pressureless life. In short order, others would follow. Li — Howard W. French

The community of Partageuse had drifted together like so much dust in a breeze, settling in this spot where two oceans met, because there was fresh water and a natural harbor and good soil. Its port was no rival to Albany, but convenient for locals shipping timber or sandalwood or beef. Little businesses had sprung up and clung on like lichen on a rock face, and the town had accumulated a school, a variety of churches with different hymns and architectures, a good few brick and stone houses and a lot more built of weatherboard and tin. It gradually produced various shops, a town hall, even a Dalgety's stock and station agency. And pubs. Many pubs. — M.L. Stedman

We want Old Town Square to be a focal point for fun in Bandera, a place where locals can hold their special events and meetings, or just visit us for a relaxing dinner with friends on the patio. Likewise, tourists can use Old Town Square as a home base during their visit to Bandera. They can stay overnight and dine with us, but also explore all that Bandera has to offer. This was the place to come to. We want to make it that kind of place again. — Jerry Reed

You need to eat what's local. So that's what I'm trying to do - just be as close to nature as possible. — Valentina Zelyaeva

At a minimum, solidarity in this current struggle dictates that we do not constrain the choices of those who are most affected by police killings (though I think the label of "most affected" in this case excludes not only whites but also economically mobile activists of color who fly in from across the country). One way that white people might fail at that is by starting a riot every time locals were trying to organize a vigil. — Anonymous

Truthfully we were alone only in the ways Westerners speak of being alone in Africa, as if the few hundred locals by whom they are almost always surrounded are part of the landscape, instead of part of humanity. — Alexandra Fuller

At lunch, Michael began to reminisce about his first election in Wales, when he was selected to occupy Nye Bevan's seat. A brief kerfuffle had resulted when his name did not appear on the short list of Labour Party candidates for the seat. Evidently some locals preferred not to take on Michael in spite of his association with Nye. Jennie Lee, along with others, intervened and Michael not only made the list but also was selected and won his seat in the general election. He had a wonderful photograph of himself and Jill, with their dog Vanessa between them. The happy looking dog in the centre looked as if she had won the election, I told Michael. "It did, too," he said. — Carl Rollyson

Business was doing well, because all the locals knew that dishes made from the flowers that grew around the apple tree in the Waverley garden could affect the eater in curious ways. The biscuits with lilac jelly, the lavender tea cookies, and the tea cakes made with nasturtium mayonnaise the Ladies Aid ordered for their meetings once a month gave them the ability to keep secrets. The fried dandelion buds over marigold-petal rice, stuffed pumpkin blossoms, and rose-hip soup ensured that your company would notice only the beauty of your home and never the flaws. Anise hyssop honey butter on toast, angelica candy, and cupcakes with crystallized pansies made children thoughtful. Honeysuckle wine served on the Fourth of July gave you the ability to see in the dark. The nutty flavor of the dip made from hyacinth bulbs made you feel moody and think of the past, and the salads made with chicory and mint had you believing that something good was about to happen, whether it was true or not. — Sarah Addison Allen

I wore only black socks, because I had heard that white ones were the classic sign of the American tourist. Black ones though,- those'll fool 'em. I supposed I hoped the European locals' conversation would go something like this:

PIERRE: Ha! Look at that tourist with his camera and guidebook!
JACQUES: Wait, but observe his socks! They are...black!
PIERRE: Zut alors! You are correct! He is one of us! What a fool I am! Let us go speak to him in English and invite him to lunch! — Doug Mack

A local church will only be as great as its conception of God. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Thousands of grasshoppers were jumping everywhere; I felt like I was walking through popping popcorn. These critters made me conscious of my surroundings, since many snakes eat grasshoppers. When it comes to rattlesnakes and copperheads, the locals there have a saying that the "Third person gets bit." The theory is: the first person gets the snake's attention, the second person gets the snake aggravated, and the third person gets bit. There were only two of us, but I didn't feel like testing the theory. — Dennis R. Blanchard

Is Darling still awake?" She stepped back so that he could see Ryn. "He is." Hauk headed for the bed. "Fain sent me a note about what's going on with the locals. I'm here with backup." Darling growled. "Not helpless, people." "Not people, human," Hauk said in an exasperated tone. Darling made an obscene gesture at him. "I thought I got rid of you when I left the hospital." Hauk clutched his chest as if those words wounded him. "Aww now, Dar, you're going to hurt my feelings." "You don't have feelings." "True. Just think of me like a bad STD. I always show up at the worst time." He glanced back at Zarya. "So much for your hot date, huh?" Darling groaned. "You are ever a pain in my ass, Hauk. Should I reset the timers on my explosives in the city? Might give the Resistance pause if they think I'm going to take them or their families with me." Ryn — Sherrilyn Kenyon

He was thinking about men like his Uncle Ted, a Cornishman to his bones, who lived and would die in St. Mawes, part of the fabric of the place, remembered as long as there were locals, beaming out of fading photographs of the Life Boat on pub walls. When Ted died - and Strike hoped it would be twenty, thirty years hence - they would mourn him as the unknown Barrovian Grammar boy was being mourned: with drink, with tears, but in celebration that he had been given to them. What had dark, hulking Brockbank, child rapist, and fox-haired Laing, wife-torturer, left behind in the towns of their birth? Shudders of relief that they had gone, fear that they had returned, a trail of broken people and bad memories. — Robert Galbraith

On 11 September 2012 crowds of friendly locals in Kabul, Afghanistan, were chanting the usual 'Death to America' slogans. At the same time American flags were torched from London to Sydney. And in Benghazi, Libya, a group of 'spontaneous protesters' arrived at the US consulate with rocket-propelled grenades and savagely murdered the US ambassador. In Washington, members of the Obama administration were, as we have already seen, showing that they weren't taking any of this personally. It wasn't about them and it certainly wasn't about their ambassador, who had in fact been murdered by terrorists in a pre-planned attack. The administration was still claiming all this was caused by an excerpt from an amateur film which had been up on YouTube for weeks. — Douglas Murray

I've got a nice little crafty deal with the people in Barbados; 10 days out there teaching the locals how to play darts for an hour a day. Get paid for that as well. — Eric Bristow

Stay away from restaurants that have menus in five languages. That's always a tourist trap. You want to eat where the locals eat. — Curtis Stone

A steady spray of mist silently soaks my fooyball jersey, an irritating rain we locals call spit. Not worth the trouble of opening an umbrella. Not worth spit. Kind of like me. — Jennifer Hotes

where locals and fans could dance the night away and take home expensive swag, — Melissa Foster

All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world and to the longed-for moment when all will be revealed and when the sheep will be divided from the goats, or whatever other bucolic Bronze-Age desert analogy might seem apt. (In Papua New Guinea, where as in most tropical climes there are no sheep, the Christians use the most valued animal of the locals and refer to the congregation as "swine." Flock, herd: what difference does it make?) Against this insane eschatology, with its death wish and its deep contempt for the life of the mind, atheists have always argued that this world is all that we have, and that our duty is to one another to make the very most and best of it. Theism cannot coexist with this unexceptionable conclusion. — Christopher Hitchens

Oh, bullshit. This isn't one of those stories, Avice. One moment of cack-handedness, Captain Cook offends the bloody locals, one slip of the tongue or misuse of sacred cutlery, and bang, he's on the grill. Do you ever think about how self-aggrandising that stuff is? Oh, all those stories pretending to be mea culpas about cultural insensitivity, oops, we said the wrong thing, but they're really all about how ridiculous natives overreact. Avice, we must have made thousands of fuckups like that over the years. Think about it. Just like our visitors did when they first met our lot, on Terre. And for the most part we didn't lose our shit, did we? — China Mieville

Seeking more information, I walked through the market listening to the gossip and discovered that our new general, the man sent to quell the unrest in the east, was the second son of a provincial tax collector whose only claims to recognition were that he had commanded some legions in Britain in the heady, early days of the invasion, that his brother had once stood for consul, and that he had been a governor in some African province, where the locals had thrown turnips at him.
Despairing, I returned to the house, and that despair deepened later when Horgias came home with the news that our new paragon of martial virtue had until recently been hiding in Greece, in disgrace for having fallen asleep during one of Nero's recitals in the theatre. — M.C. Scott

Even if you've no idea where you're going, you have to look like you do. It's what keeps the locals different from the strangers. — Kate Griffin

The local groceries are all out of broccoli, loccoli. — Roy Blount Jr.

Hiring foreigners is more expensive and more difficult than hiring locals, because of the visa fees and long lead times for visa processing. And companies face a backlash by anti-immigrant groups for hiring foreigners. So they do it only because they have to. — Vivek Wadhwa

There are companies trying to build business within Saudi Arabia, and what they find is that if they try to bring on locals and teach them how to become senior executives, they just don't show up to work. They are not predictable as to when they'll come in and how much of their hearts are into that opportunity. — Clayton Christensen

I can't speak for all Hawaiians, but the reality is that we depend on tourism. Locals might not want to go to the spots like Waikiki, but we do want tourists to experience more of the islands. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

From that original colony sprang seven names that still feature on the landscape: Roanoke (which has the distinction of being the first Indian word borrowed by English settlers), Cape Fear, Cape Hatteras, the Chowan and Neuse Rivers, Chesapeake, and Virginia. (Previously, Virginia had been called Windgancon, meaning "what gay clothes you wear" - apparently what the locals had replied when an early reconnoitering party had asked the place's name.) — Bill Bryson

I don't know if I would refer to myself as a local celebrity. — Joshua Greenberg

The divided world of Aspen, where locals with a sense of entitlement were pitted against developers with a sense of condominiums. — Steve Martin

Your sad eyes are a river the locals know not to swim — Tyler Gonlag

This is one of the hallmarks of Vegas hospitality. The only bedrock rule is Don't Burn the Locals. Beyond that, nobody cares. They would rather not know. If Charlie Manson checked into the Sahara tomorrow morning, nobody would hassle him as long as he tipped big. — Hunter S. Thompson

Everything within takes place after Jack died and before my mom and I drowned in a burning ferry in the cool tannin-tinted Guaviare River, in east-central Colombia, with forty-two locals we hadn't yet met. It was a clear and eyeblue day, that day, as was the first day of this story, a few years ago in January, on Chicago's North Side, in the opulent shadow of Wrigley and with the wind coming low and searching off the jagged half-frozen lake. — Dave Eggers

I'm a trumpet player, so I always carry a pocket trumpet in case there's an opportunity to jam with the locals. I was in Guadeloupe last year filming 'Death in Paradise,' and I played all over the island and had the best time. — Colin Salmon

I feel like I've been blessed to be able to travel with this music, so I always try to get down with the locals. — Chali 2na

The Christians seized all the maize the locals of Nicaragua had grown for themselves and their own families and, as a consequence, some twenty or thirty thousand natives died of hunger, some mothers even killing their own children and eating them. — Bartolome De Las Casas

The locals would just have to assume there'd been gas explosion. (we tented to cause a lot of those) — Serpent's Shadow Rick Riordan

I enjoy going on motorcycle trips and stopping in small towns and enjoying drinks with the locals. — George Clooney

The only way you can be universal is to be sure you are very specifically local. — Damon Galgut

One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory. — Pico Iyer

He stared at the cheap linoleum between his shoes and admitted to himself that once again he had fallen into the trap that often snared so many of the educated and upper-class locals when they convinced themselves that the rest of the population was stupid and ignorant. Cranwell was smarter than most lawyers in town, and infinitely more prepared. — John Grisham

An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance. — Douglas Adams

Like so much in Singapore, admission to the Marina Bay's casino is hierarchical: Free for anyone with an international passport, costly for locals, off-limits to migrant workers altogether. — Alan Huffman

The process of dehuminazing the locals was under way, and it had very little to do with veracity. The Puritan narratives would continue that process and bring the devil into the mix. At least John Smith didn't think Satan was involved. — Thomas C. Foster