Appalachia Quotes

• Because they [Americans] want to be thought of as a rich nation, they are very ashamed of this place [Appalachia] that has come to represent poverty, even though poverty exists all over the country, and exists as much in urban areas as it does in rural, if not more.

  Silas House

  Country, Doe, Want

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• I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  People, Grandparent, Southern

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• Appalachia is still, for American musicians, a kind of fountain of youth we always go back to, the old home place to a group of artists who represent the quintessence of American independence, fortitude, genius, and madness.

  Paul Burch

  Music, Home, Artist

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• It's not enough to celebrate the ideals that we're built on, liberty and justice and equality for all. Those just can't be words on paper, the work of every generation is to make those words mean something, concrete in the lives of our children. And we won't get there as long as kids in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York or Appalachia or the Mississippi delta or the Pine Ridge reservation believe that their lives are somehow worthless.

  Barack Obama

  New York, Children, Believe

  "Baltimore unrest as Obama pushes mentoring program" by Eric Bradner, www.cnn.com. May 5, 2015.

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• 

  The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

  John Muir

  Nature, Adventure, Garden

  John Muir, Edwin Way Teale, Henry Bugbee Kane (2001). “The Wilderness World of John Muir”, p.312, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For better or worse, the bulk of coal industry jobs are in Appalachia - and when that coal is gone, so are the jobs.

  Jeff Goodell

  Jobs, Gone, Coal

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• I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music.

  Renee Fleming

  Simple, Emotional, Grandfather

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• While writing Cold Mountain, I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. He's much the same Jack who climbs the beanstalk, vulnerable and clever and opportunistic.

  Charles Frazier

  Clever, Writing, Two

  "Week three: Charles Frazier on writing Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier, www.theguardian.com. September 30, 2011.

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• There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.

  Shane Claiborne

  Poverty, Urban, Extremes

  "Interview with Shane Claiborne: Embracing the Margins". Interview with Matt Dabbs, wineskins.org. November 17, 2015.

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• We can decide that the presence of cancer-causing substances in our air, water, and food is too expensive. A 2009 study, for example, has found that coal miners in Appalachia costs the region five times more in premature deaths, including from cancer, than it provides to the region in jobs, taxes, and economic benefits. In California, the production and use of hazardous chemicals cost the state $2.6 billion in 2004 alone in lost wages and health-care expenses to treat workers and children with pollution-linked diseases.

  Sandra Steingraber

  Jobs, Children, Cancer

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• If you go out on the Appalachian Trail, you have to bring so much more equipment - a tent, sleeping bag - but if you go hiking in England, or Europe, generally, towns and villages are near enough together at the end of the day you can always go to a nice little inn and have a hot bath and something to drink.

  Bill Bryson

  Nice, Sleep, Europe

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• I went to a large consolidated school in Appalachia. And I wrote the story when I was in the second grade and I took it up to the third floor to the school newspaper office that was written and edited by juniors and seniors.

  Tom Robbins

  Senior, School, Office

  "Novelist Tom Robbins Plays Not My Job". Interview with Peter Sagal, www.npr.org. June 5, 2010.

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• The environmental catastrophes we're presently seeing are considered "normal" though they're horrific. Fracking has made drinking water flammable, families are dying from planned lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, mountaintop removal is killing families throughout Appalachia, and oil/mining companies continue to denigrate Native American and indigenous rights throughout the world (see North Dakota Pipeline presently). This is horrific - and yet we somehow consider it normal.

  Alexander Weinstein

  Drinking, Native American, Oil

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• My parents were not affluent people and were not - didn't come from the extremities of education. My mother had a high school diploma. I often think I so wish she'd come out of the hills in Appalachia and been able to go on to college. I think she would have made a wonderful teacher.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Mother, Teacher, School

  "Singer-songwriter Dwight Yoakam". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. September 18, 2012.

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• Historians will come to their own judgments about President Kennedy. Here is how I choose to remember him. He was an heir to wealth who felt the anguish of the poor. He was an orator of excellence who spoke for the voiceless. He was a son of Harvard who reached out to the sons and daughters of Appalachia. He was a man of special grace who had a special care for the retarded and handicapped. He was a hero of war who fought hardest for peace. He said and proved in word and deed that one man can make a difference.

  Edward Kennedy

  Daughter, War, Hero

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• Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.

  Robert Morgan

  People, Labels, Use

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• We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit.

  Katherine Dunham

  African American, Rooms, American Indian

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• I've never set out consciously to write American music. I don't know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Writing, Would Be, Obvious

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• Go walk the streets of Beijing. It's pretty hard to argue it isn't a modern city. Now, if you go outside [of Beijing], in the rural areas, that's true. But rural America, you can say the same thing, in Appalachia there's an awful lot of poverty and lack of education.

  Michael Bloomberg

  America, Cities, Awful

  Source: asia.nikkei.com

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• I grew up in southwestern Virginia. I was born in South Carolina, but only because my parents had a vacation cabin or something there on the beach. I was like a summer baby. But I did grow up in the South. I grew up in serious, serious Appalachia, in a very small town.

  William Gibson

  Summer, Baby, Beach

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. August 22, 2007.

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• Yeah, I spent my teen years in West Virginia, and when I was a kid, in Louisiana. I definitely have that exposure to two different sorts of rural: the South and Appalachia.

  Sam Trammell

  Kids, Virginia, Years

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• I don't really think the outburst is recent; there have always been writers in Appalachia.

  Donald Ray Pollock

  Thinking, Outburst

  Source: therumpus.net

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