Poor People Quotes

“The hospital bulked darkly in the darkness.”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“More aid, better directed! Couldn't we all use that? And what if the universe enacts less aid, more poorly directed?”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“Life is an extended camping trip. With a leaky, inferior tent one runs no more risk of rain than anyone else; but if it does rain, the person in the cheap tent chances soaking in his sleeping bag, and possibly dying of hypothermia.”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“Poverty, like richness, most frequently expresses itself in selfishness. And the selfishness of the desperate can partake of an urgent ruthlessness.”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“Aging is painful; the rotting teeth, the impotence, the loss of muscle tone and the workplace discrimination are all painful in different ways.”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“Self-reliance is a luxury of the rich.”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“Deformity is the noisiness, the abusiveness, the sniveling or groveling abnormality through which so many beggars seek our help.”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“Communication being, like other skills, a skill of the rich, the poor people in this book sometimes failed to tell me what I longed to know.”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“Even had they foreseen it, who could have imagined that the de-Communization of China meant the betrayal of poor people on all fronts, even in that most un-Communist sphere of all, private property?”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People

“The lot of the poor can easily be imagined, runs a textbook on Filipino economics. They are forced to eat unwholesome and inadequate food, wear ragged clothes, and live in unhealthful surroundings. When they get sick, they cannot afford medical care. The textbook continues: They are responsive to the subversive preachings of wild-eyed agitators who make extravagant promises of social amelioration.”
― William T. Vollmann, Poor People