Appalachia Quotes

“What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die of course. Literally shit myself lifeless.”
― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

“What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor—even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“The American woods have been unnerving people for 300 years. The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a vist to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the cored. This wasn't the tame world of overgrown orchards and sun-dappled paths that passed for wilderness in suburban Concord, Massachusetts, but a forbiggind, oppressive, primeval country that was "grim and wild . . .savage and dreary," fit only for "men nearer of kin to the rocks and wild animals than we." The experience left him, in the words of one biographer, "near hysterical.”
― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

“We're all Hitler inside. We're all Christ inside. I'm not keen on the idea, but it's true, isn't it? We've all got a little bit of the devil in us.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“The pull of our roots can be such a strong force, no matter how far or wide we may roam.”
― Lauren McDuffie, Smoke, Roots, Mountain, Harvest: Recipes and Stories Inspired by My Appalachian Home

“Here's how I'll tell you what I think—if you see white smoke then you know I picked a new pope. And if I'm drinking a Snapple then you know I don't give a shit.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“Nothing else in the whole wide world matters as much as avenging your sister.”
― Jason Jack Miller, HELLBENDER

“You are not a handgun. More like a pellet gun. Maybe even a slingshot.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“It's Coke, my man. You really think I'm going to let you pour any more alcohol into your body tonight?”
― Jason Jack Miller, HELLBENDER

“Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through, Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through. He'd lay in bed 'til the morning came, but the devil'd visit him just the same. Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“Music lets you write your own checks. Don't ever forget that.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“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.”
― Nellie Cake, 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.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“On our trip to Appalachia, I realized that my destiny would always be connected to mountains.”
― Steve Vasiliou, Geotravel: Tips and Stories

“Yeah, but a hellbender never dies. You ever see a dead one?”
― Jason Jack Miller

“If it ran, a Bean would shoot it. If it fell, a Bean would eat it.”
― Carolyn Chute

“They travel through the heartland, past cold factories and drifty towns, to the old, old mountains slumbering east of Tennessee.”
― Sarah Sullivan, Passing the Music Down

“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...”
― J.D. Vance, 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.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“Appalachia, in fact, is a very matriarchal culture. We revere our grandmothers and mothers.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“In Appalachia, everyone has a fierce granny story.”
― Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy

“If you don't tell your story, somebody else will.”
― Frank X. Walker

“so all you can hear is just general leaves?”
― Charles Frazier , Cold Mountain

“Then Penny turned off the television, sighed, and said, “I swear that man’s corn bread ain’t done in the middle.”
― Ashley Blooms, Every Bone a Prayer

“Grandma saw our red dog road as a place where I might fall down and get hurt.

But I knew if I did I'd get back up.

And that red dog road would lead me to every place I would ever go in my lifetime.”
― Drema Hall Berkheimer, Running on Red Dog Road: And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood

“Grandma saw our red dog road as a place where I might fall down and get hurt.

But I knew if I did, I'd get back up.

And that red dog road would lead me to every place I would ever go in my lifetime.”
― Drema Hall Berkheimer, Running on Red Dog Road: And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood

“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.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“She heard it from her friend Sax's cousin that lived in Northern Virginia. Kids up there evidently had brains coming out of their ears, to the extent of needing to meet up with other kids for brain-to-brain combat.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“And what exactly is a frog hair, Ms. Monroe?”
― Eve M. Harrell, Revealed Truth: A Journey From Fear to Faith

“Her girlhood was spent in graceless toil and crowned by an early marriage. Wasted by a quarter-century of childbearing, she saw a row of graves dug for her children. Often she survived as a widow to fend for the remainder of her brood. She could rarely influence the impetuous decisions of her husband and sons, and, never far from the family graveyard, mourned through long years the results of their errors.”
― Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area