“so all you can hear is just general leaves?”
Source: Cold Mountain
“She asked me what I wanted to be whenever I grew up. I had to think about that. We went past some barns and tobacco fields with their big yellow-green leaves waving in the sad evening light. She looked over at me and said, Hey, why so glum, chum?
I told her nobody had ever asked me that question before, about growing up and what I wanted to be, so I didn't know. Mainly, still alive.”
Source: Demon Copperhead
“Homelessness is not a race thing. It's not a gender thing. It's not a religious thing. It's not a gay or straight thing. It's not a political thing. It's not a thing, it's people.”
Source: God Saw You Kill My Two Little Friends!
“Elegies are poems dedicated to the dead. The American hillbilly(assuming we can use that word for the white working class) isn't dead; she is just poor.”
Source: Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy
“If you don't tell your story, somebody else will.”
“On our trip to Appalachia, I realized that my destiny would always be connected to mountains.”
Source: Geotravel: Tips and Stories
“I tried to go to a counselor, but it was just too weird. Talking to some stranger about my feelings made me want to vomit. I did go to the library...”
Source: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
“He seems to be giving his people a (mostly) gently worded lecture on their lack of willingness to work even when it appears almost pointless to do so. For that reason, the book should have been titled Hillbilly Reprimand, because Vance doesn't want to mourn his hillbilly family. He wants to make them good proletarians like they allegedly were in the twentieth century.”
Source: Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy
“In Appalachia, everyone has a fierce granny story.”
Source: Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy
“Then Penny turned off the television, sighed, and said, “I swear that man’s corn bread ain’t done in the middle.”
Source: Every Bone a Prayer