Valerie June Quotes

The thing about living in a village at the foot of a mountain is that the world for you becomes, without thinking about it, self-contained. People are of two kinds, really: from the Valley, and from Elsewhere.

Living in Cape Breton, it's really all about fiddle music, so it's not like there were other instruments out there that tempted me and it was like I had to decide which one. It was automatically fiddle, because it's the predominant instrument in Cape Breton Island.

I grew up in wide-open spaces, but they didn't have the romantic history of the West.

I grew up at the base of a mountain in Virginia, so my comfort zone is that Appalachian area, where all the dudes wear Carhartt and all the women can put on a beautiful sweater with a snowman applique and nobody raises an eyebrow.

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.

Something I notice speaking to writers from south of Hadrian's Wall is that the culture is different. At base, I think Scotland values its creative industries differently from England.

I was born in New Jersey, but it doesn't sound like I'm from a certain region.

I'm from Chicago and it's a huge influence on me.

I can't escape being born in Pike County, Kentucky, grandson of a miner, Luther Tibbs, and his wife, Earlene, and traveling as a child up and down Route 23 between Kentucky and Columbus, Ohio, where I was raised, experiencing life via working-class people. Nor do I want to escape.

My family are from Liverpool, so I have some twang there - I have a Midlands accent, and I was raised about an hour north of London, so my voice is a mess. Although, to American ears, it sounds like the crisp language of a queen's butler.

Place is so important to me. The Midwest is like a ghost in my life. It's present as I look out the window now. I see Texas, but if I close my eyes and look out the same window, I'm back in my hometown in Worthington, Minnesota, and I cherish those values and that diction.

People ask 'How do you get so eh-ish?' I don't know if it's just because so much of my family still lives in Canada and I finished studies up there.

I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition.

I was born and raised in New York, so I was blessed - or some say cursed - with a strong New York accent.

When I'm doing a store in a country, I always like to consider the concept of the country and the city.

I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have written... have really in any way been Southern in character.

I'm pretty sure in my older years, I'll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.

I'm nuts about the South - the people, the language, the food, the land, the stories and writers that come from there - but it's hard to know whether I'll use it as a location again.

I've always played music. But you know, in eastern Kentucky, everybody plays music.

I am completely attached to my roots, and therefore you will see a Pahadi touch in all my albums.

I like being Southern; I like going to Cracker Barrel - I mean, that's just how I am.

There is a whole host of people that have got an accent like mine, whether they're from Merseyside or Wales or the North West.

I kind of have found my identity through the music, through the roots music of North Carolina, and kind of realized that that's my identity as a North Carolinian.

I used to have a little Geordie accent when I was younger; they called me Little Geordie Fran.

I've always been drawn back to the South, whether it's Southern California or in Florida, where I grew up, and I wanted to write a song about that.