Melanie Gauthier

“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

“The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“Mamaw always had two gods: Jesus Christ and the United States of America. I was no different, and neither was anyone else I knew. I’m”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

“Psychologists call it “learned helplessness” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life. From Middletown’s world of small expectations to the constant chaos of our home, life had taught me that I had no control. Mamaw and Papaw had saved me from succumbing entirely to that notion, and the Marine Corps broke new ground. If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness. The”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis