J

“Our large group left an awful mess...I couldn't imagine leaving it all for some poor guy to clean up, so I stayed behind. Of a dozen classmates, only one person helped me: my buddy Jamil...I told Jamil that we were probably the only people in the school who'd ever had to clean up someone else's mess.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

“For kids like me, the part of the brain that deals with stress and conflict is always activated...We are constantly ready to fight or flee, because there is a constant exposure to the bear, whether that bear is an alcoholic dad or an unhinged mom (p228)....I see conflict and I run away or prepare for battle. (p246)”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

“But yeah, like everyone else in our family, they could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

“If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature