Hillbilly Quotes

“Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“If Arkansas is, indeed, one big family, Eureka Springs remains its eccentric uncle.”
― Rex Nelson

“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

“Under the Roman Empire, barbarians were the rural trash of their day. The word "pagan" is derived from the Latin pagus, meaning "country", and Romans used it disparagingly to describe country dwellers. Likewise, "heathen" originally meant those rural types who lived under cover of the heath. Both "pagan" and "heathen" are thus ancient verbal ancestors of "hillbilly.”
― Jim Goad

“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

“I had a dream that I lost my teeth and when I woke up they were all still in my mouth, thank God that I am not a Hill Billy after all.”
― Starley Ard, Dreaming is for lovers

“I keep hearing all these jokes on TV about how people in Arkansas are still barefoot hillbillies. Sure there are plenty of people living up in the hills and mountains on Arkansas. Why not? The scenery is breathtaking from their million-dollar houses up in those hills. Those people bought Wal-Mart stock early. They paid cash for those homes.
-Little Rock resident on how some people from "up North" view Arkansas”
― Maryln Schwartz, New Times In The Old South: Or Why Scarlett's in Therapy & Tara's Going Condo

“The Untheory of Evolution, and Other Scientific Studies Including Hunting, Fishing, and Sex" by William C. Berdine needs to be available to put in my favorite books list.

This book is excellent for any young teen to stumble across and read. I found it while my parents were driving me to Florida for a vacation and as a preteen I fell in love immediately with the book and the person behind it.”
― William C. Berdine