Excellence in academia does not limit itself to rich neighborhoods. We have students with potential for excellence in small towns, in the periphery. We must reach out to such people and bring them to the universities.

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

Admittedly, they [(places in novels)] didn't all have such ridiculous names as the ones in the Piddle Valley where her father's group of parishes was centered. It would have been hard to make credible a romantic fiction set in Farleigh Piddle, Middle Piddle, Nether Piddle and Piddle Dummer.

When I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I was so struck by the universality of small towns.

There isn't anything else like this in academia.

In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.