Hillbilly Quotes & Sayings

Deep down, I'm just a West Virginia hillbilly. — Brad Paisley

I get along with all the women singers, but especially Dolly Parton. We talk the same hillbilly language. — Loretta Lynn

To be a full-blooded hillbilly was to be a living koan. Half of you wanted to be dignified and half of you couldn't tolerate any restraint. You could see it in the regional art and hear it in the music. Wood carving with chainsaws. Cloggers who danced up a storm with the lower half of their bodies, but held the upper half perfectly still and stared off into the distance stone-faced. Or a group of bluegrass musicians who'd be playing the most raucous tunes imaginable, looking around at each other with bemused expressions that seemed to say where's all that racket comin from?
Phoebe believed that nearly all the adult males everywhere were pretty much the same way. Most of them could manage to keep the top half of themselves under a semblance of control, but the bottom half tended to run wild. As she continued to descend the trail she couldn't help but think that most men were mentally ill below the waist. — Carolyn Jourdan

You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly. — Hank Williams

In general, those from outside the southern culture built a style around exaggerations of southern music, and missed the lonesome hillbilly and blues feel that was its core. In the quest for abandon, they also failed to understand that southern music is lazy music - at any tempo. — Colin Escott

were her kids. But the drugs and the late-night fighting revealed troubles that too many hillbilly transplants knew too well. Confronted with such a realization of her own family's struggle, Mamaw — J.D. Vance

We spend so much money on these dresses that are terrible. And what do we get out of it? Nothing - a piece of chicken and a roll in the hay with her hillbilly cousin - no thank you. My family's very close; I can do that at home. — Chelsea Handler

I believe that Willy Nelson is the hillbilly Dalai Lama. — Kinky Friedman

I'm a simple hillbilly. I don't like eating modern, industrialized, fast food. I grew up eating home-cooked food. So when I'm traveling abroad, like when I recently received a six-month writing fellowship to Iowa in the U.S., I like to cook my own food. — Andrea Hirata

Cynthia didn't mind Confederate flags. She'd like to see a law that required every white trash hillbilly to have one tattooed on his or her forehead. You would see them coming that way. — Laura Lippman

All children want to go to space. Earth only offers parents wailing about overdraft notices and evening news playing in an empty den. Dead pets too. Childhood is a rot. And so they look up and see stars shiver, ancient information only just now arriving, because that is the only place left to look, and they yearn. — David Connerley Nahm

Doing a thing call the Hillbilly Rock, some say it came from Elvis down in Tennessee. — Marty Stuart

Under the Roman Empire, barbarians were the rural trash of their day. The word "pagan" is derived from the Latin pagus, meaning "country", and Romans used it disparagingly to describe country dwellers. Likewise, "heathen" originally meant those rural types who lived under cover of the heath. Both "pagan" and "heathen" are thus ancient verbal ancestors of "hillbilly. — Jim Goad

Most people don't listen to classical music at all, but to rock-and-roll or hillbilly songs or some album named Music To Listen To Music By ... — Randall Jarrell

I gaped. "You are not seriously that chauvinistic?"
"Hmmm ... " He stroked his chin dramatically. "Maybe not in real life." Hillbilly again. "But as your fake husband ... yes, I think I am."
I eyed him up and down. "I need to call the Guinness Book of Records or Gray's Anatomy or something, because I am standing here looking at the single largest asshole ever known to man. — Kristin Walker

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered. — Daniel Woodrell

Bucky," Lester said. "The other night I started to explain to someone your philosophy on Southern accents, but all I could remember was that it defied logic." "Southern accents are hillbilly," Bucky said with petulance. "Anyone with a proper education, I don't care if he's never stepped foot out of the South, doesn't go around sounding like Jubilation T. Cornpone. If he does, it's a put-on. And please, I'm in no mood to rehash the obvious. — Maria Semple

Shit, a hillbilly ho' MMA reality show? It could've aired right after Buckwild. All you'd need is an above ground swimming pool - one of those fancy ones from Sears with the wrap around decking - and you'd have the perfect cracker coliseum. Who wouldn't pay to see a couple spitting-mad, big-haired Daisy-Dukes kick the shit out of each other while some good-old-boys drank themselves stupid cheering them on? — E.V. Iverson

The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer. — H.L. Mencken

The "hillbilly" girls were generating more enriched Tubealloy per run than the PhDs had...The District Engineer understood perfectly. Those girls...had been trained like soldiers. Do what you're told. Don't ask why. — Denise Kiernan

For even more "sizzle," instead of simply leading the goats out to graze as we usually did, I raced out in front of them, hollering an improvisational goat call that made me sound like a yodeling hillbilly. I turned back toward the barn and aw that the goats had stayed back, huddled together in fear in the barn doorway. They obviously preferred to skip dinner rather than get too close to the retard scarecrow suffering a grand mal seizure.

~The Bocolic Plauge, by Josh Kilmer-Purcell (2010), P. 214-215 — Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Hillbilly culture at the time (and maybe now) blended a robust sense of honor, devotion to family, and bizarre sexism into a sometimes explosive mix. — J.D. Vance

We all got a hillbilly bone down deep inside. — Blake Shelton

Usually going places makes me feel optimistic. And I'm a hillbilly, so heading to the countryside made sense a number of ways. — Jenny Holzer

Once in a while I get inspired and finish my act with the hillbilly hoedown. — Loretta Lynn

Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. — David Sedaris

You know what I do on Sundays? I sing in a choir. I sing in a Greek Orthodox choir, and I'm the only hillbilly tenor in the Orthodox Church. — Chris Hillman

In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke. — Iggy Pop

I think of myself as a Hollywood hillbilly, but I'm sick of all these questions people ask about Alabama. 'Do you have an outhouse?' 'Is there a lot of inbreeding in your family?' They think all Southerners don't have computers and TV sets and that we're all still living in 1862. — Sunny Mabrey

It reminds me of the setting for a random, cheesy horror
flick. It makes me think that if we do break down, some
deformed hillbilly will probably drag us into a dilapidated
shack and eat us alive - just like what happened to those
kids in Wrong Turn . — Michelle A. Valentine

I don't know why - it's just that - I don't know - they're not kin." - Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin - sounds like hillbilly talk - not of a kind - same root - kindness, too - they can't have real kindness toward him, they're not his kin
. That's exactly the feeling.
Old word, so ancient it's almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be "kind." And everybody's supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. Now it's just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin. — Robert M. Pirsig

Some people were born just so they could be buried. — Donald Ray Pollock

For me, jazz, R&B, jump swing, Chicago blues, country blues, early hillbilly music, and honky tonk all stem from the same source — Duke Robillard

Nashville has always been competitive. My granddaddy called it the Hillbilly Babylon. — Hunter S. Jones

I had a dream that I lost my teeth and when I woke up they were all still in my mouth, thank God that I am not a Hill Billy after all. — Starley Ard

It's been years since any hillbilly has reported getting sodomized by an alien. Did they break up and not tell us? — Dana Gould

Remember this, folks - I am a Hillbilly, and I don't always Bet the same way I talk. Good advice is one thing, but smart gambling is quite another. — Hunter S. Thompson

There was a misconception about me when I started off because I had my hair greased up and I have some vague resemblance to the hillbilly gene pool that Elvis came from. People would say, 'You want to be Elvis' and I would say, 'No'. — Chris Isaak

When we first started recording, it was before rock, so people thought we were hillbilly hicks. That was something we had to deal with; the girls didn't think we were cool, although they did a few years later. We had ducktails and wore peg-leg pants. We looked like rock n' rollers. — Phil Everly

It's hillbilly urine; we had better get home before they come to eat us. Kevin said pointing towards home proving if there was ever any doubt that he had no acting ability at all. (The Children of Ankh series) — Kim Cormack

I ain't never heardin' of a place called Odin."

Now Mazda knew. Hillbilly. A fucking hillbilly. If there was one thing that Mazda disliked more than Greeks, it was hillbillies. He grabbed the slack-jawed yokel by the throat and lifted him off the ground, "Not a place. A who."

The man had a difficult time speaking, "Awho? Who's Awho? Is he at Odin? — Dylan Callens

Look, you lost a tooth. Congratulations. Enjoy looking like a hillbilly. Here's a dollar, — Jim Gaffigan

Last night I dreamed I went to hillbilly heaven and you know who greeted me at the gate? The ole cowboy-philosopher himself, Will Rogers. — Tex Ritter

Besides its content and methods, the cuisine devised by squaws and hillbilly women, as well as slave women, had another thing in common, which was the belief that you made do with whatever you could lay hands on
pigs' entrails, turnip tops, cowpeas, terrapins, catfish
anything that didn't bite you first. — Shirley Abbott

People look at you, and they've got just the perfect little box for you, the perfect category. Call you a redneck. Call you a hillbilly. Like those were insults. — Travis Tritt

Hacked to pieces by a band of hillbilly satanists" hadn't ever made my list of imagined ways of getting rubbed out - and as the Samurai warriors of yore meditated on a thousand demises, I too had imagined a whole lot of ways of kicking. Helios Augustus's candle flame flickered in the black opening. He — Laird Barron

Please don't feel hurt, Satan, but my parents raised me to believe you didn't exist. My mom and dad said you and God were invented in the superstitious, backward pea brains of hillbilly preachers and Republican hypocrites. — Chuck Palahniuk

My guitars, Cadillacs, and hillbilly music Is the only thing that keeps me hanging on. — Dwight Yoakam

I keep hearing all these jokes on TV about how people in Arkansas are still barefoot hillbillies. Sure there are plenty of people living up in the hills and mountains on Arkansas. Why not? The scenery is breathtaking from their million-dollar houses up in those hills. Those people bought Wal-Mart stock early. They paid cash for those homes.
-Little Rock resident on how some people from "up North" view Arkansas — Maryln Schwartz

If Arkansas is, indeed, one big family, Eureka Springs remains its eccentric uncle. — Rex Nelson

I'm a native West Virginian and I've been called everything from a hillbilly to a stump jumper. I'm always proud of it; I'm very proud to be a West Virginian. — John Raese

You're smart then . . . aren't you, Finn?" I heard the awe in my own voice. It wasn't a question. I had never been school smart, and marveled at those who were. "I thought you were. I was never any good with numbers. Math has always been like a murky pond, and me, a hillbilly stabbing at the fish with a pokey stick, trying to get lucky."
"That doesn't make any sense, Bonnie." Finn laughed softly.
"That's my point, Clyde — Amy Harmon

Hopefully I'll be the first Mexican-American going into Hillbilly Heaven. — Freddy Fender

The jukebox played some hillbilly tune; steel guitar and emotion-choked moaning ... — Philip K. Dick

Bob," I say, "a man who is no longer interested in the genetics of inbred hillbilly water unicorns is a man who is no longer interested in life. I am afraid for your priorities, son." — T. Kingfisher

Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish - a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow - to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested ... Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll. — Hunter S. Thompson

Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering "who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?" — Chuck Berry

I'll have your fucking job for this, you animal-raping, backwoods, hillbilly — Shyloh Morgan

I'm a bit of a loner, you know? I'm more quiet by nature. And coming from, you know, hillbilly country, I'm probably more reserved. — Brad Pitt

Worst was this boy Billy Hill, he was in school with me. When the nun called out his name she done it last name first, so it come out Hill, Billy. Can you imagine that? Hillbilly. — Henry Turner

I feel like I'm the luckiest person alive. I'm always waiting for that phone call: 'Hello. We've just realized you're really a no-talent hillbilly. We've made a horrible mistake and we'd like you to leave now.' — Lance Burton

I'm no hillbilly singer. — Elvis Presley

Sallie Mae sounds like a naive and barefoot hillbilly girl but in fact they are a ruthless and aggressive conglomeration of bullies located in a tall brick building somewhere in Kansas. I picture it to be the tallest building in that state and I have decided they hire their employees straight out of prison. — David Sedaris

Tennessee's a hillbilly dumping ground, and Georgia's a lousy state too. — Flannery O'Connor

We ate the same foods, watched the same sports, and practiced the same religion. That's why I felt so much kinship with those people at the courthouse: They were hillbilly transplants in one way or another, just like me. — J.D. Vance

Tuck had always been made smaller made than Stan. Narrow shoulders, tiny hands and short fingers. Even as a young man his brown eyes were always watering like he'd been crying and his face never took hair well. What he had instead were four or five patches of hair that looked like a cluster of bee stingers popping straight out from his cheeks. — Sheldon Lee Compton

And you have nothing on him? Is he at least local? Does he have an accent?"
"Yeah, about that. I never heard this accent before."
"Really."
"It's like ... Southern with a curlicue."
"What?" Ty was laughing, but Nick didn't find his frustration all that amusing.
"I'm serious. It's like yours, but not. Like he came over from England and put the two accents together. I ... "
"Can you mimic him?"
"No! I've tried, and my tongue does not make that sound with an R."
"Your tongue can't make any kind of an R!"
"Whatever, hillbilly. — Abigail Roux

He was singing a hillbilly song that sounded half like a love song and half like a hymn. — Flannery O'Connor

I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits. — Daniel Woodrell

The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can't live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin' wide in the turns. — Daniel Woodrell

In New York, I was excited about the music in New York because the only music that I was more or less involved with in the South was either country and western or hillbilly music as we used to call it when I was a kid and, ah, gospel. There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that's in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz. — Ben E. King

On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chop with handles on 'em. — David Sedaris

Suddenly, from the depths of that chair emerged the biggest, meanest-looking dog Jesse had ever seen. One side of his face had suffered some disfiguring injury.
The jaw hung slack and the eye on that side was missing.
Jesse froze in her tracks, terrified that she might be mauled by this monstrosity of a pet. She glanced
around, looking for a stick or a rock or anything to defend herself. There was nothing close but she was afraid to move. Surely if the animal were dangerous, Floyd and Alice Fay would have said something. Jesse waited tensely for a moment before realizing the dog wasn't so much growling or barking as he was howling; loudly, purposefully howling.
"She don't bite," a voice called out. "She's my hillbilly alarm system, letting me know that they's strangers about. — Pamela Morsi

It's the hillbilly rock, beat it with a drum. Playin' them guitars like shootin from a gun. Keepin' up the rhythm, steady as a clock. Doin' a little thing called the hillbilly rock. — Marty Stuart