Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at.

Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.

It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

You don't think you'll live past it and you don't really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that's still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.

No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.