“In West Virginia, we've been extracting coal longer than anyone else. And after one hundred and fifty years of making other people rich, West Virginia is almost dead last among the states in per capita income, education rates and life expectancy. And it's not an anomaly. The areas with the richest fossil fuel resources, whether coal in West Virginia and Kentucky, or oil in Louisiana and Mississippi, are the areas with the lowest standards of living. In part, this is a necessity of the industry. The only way to convince someone to blow up their backyard or poison their water is to make sure they are so desperate that they have no other option.”

“You take what you're given, whether it's the cornfields of the Midwest or the coal mines of West Virginia, and you make your fiction out of it. It's all you have. And somehow, wherever you are, it always seems to be enough.”

“Okay, so. You, Belikov, the Alchemist, Sonya Karp, Victor Dashkov, and Robert Doru are all hanging out in West Virginia together.”“No,” I said.“No?”“We’re, uh, not in West Virginia.”

“Welcome to West Virginia, the land of lost models.”

“Are we going to New Orleans?""No", she said, backing out of the spot. "We're going to West Virginia.""I assume by 'West Virginia,' you actually mean 'Hawaii,'" I said. "Or some place equally exciting.”

“As editor of the largest newspaper in West Virginia, I scan hundreds of reports daily . . . and I am amazed by the frequency with which religion causes people to kill each other. It is a nearly universal pattern, undercutting the common assumption that religion makes people kind and tolerant.”