Hillbilly Elegy Quotes

“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

“As I increasingly saw Mom's behavior in myself, I tried to understand her.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

“Of course, the reasons poor people aren’t working as much as others are complicated, and it’s too easy to blame the problem on laziness. For many, part-time work is all they have access to, and their skills don’t fit well in the modern economy. But whatever the reasons, the rhetoric of hard work conflicts with the reality on the ground. The kids in Middletown absorb that conflict and struggle with it.”
― J. D. Vance