西班牙文化之旅

Introduction

介紹

My name is J.D. Vance, and I think I should start with a confession: I find the existence of the book you hold in your hands somewhat absurd. It says right there on the cover that it’s a memoir, but I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve accomplished nothing great in my life, certainly nothing that would justify a complete stranger paying money to read about it. The coolest thing I’ve done, at least on paper, is graduate from Yale Law School, something thirteen-year-old J.D. Vance would have considered ludicrous. But about two hundred people do the same thing every year, and trust me, you don’t want to read about most of their lives. I am not a senator, a governor, or a former cabinet secretary. I haven’t started a billion-dollar company or a world-changing nonprofit. I have a nice job, a happy marriage, a comfortable home, and two lively dogs.

我的名字是J.D.萬斯，我想我應該先坦白一下：我發現你手裡拿著的書的存在有點荒謬。封面上寫著這是一本回憶錄，但我已經三十一歲了，我將是第一個承認我一生中沒有取得任何偉大成就的人，當然也沒有什麼可以證明一個完全陌生的人花錢閱讀它。至少在紙面上，我做過的最酷的事情是從耶魯大學法學院畢業，13歲的J.D.萬斯會認為這是荒謬的。但是每年大約有兩百人做同樣的事情，相信我，你不想讀他們大部分的生活。我不是參議員、州長或前內閣秘書。我還沒有創辦過一家價值數十億美元的公司，也沒有創辦過改變世界的非營利組織。我有一份不錯的工作，幸福的婚姻，舒適的家，還有兩隻活潑的狗。

So I didn’t write this book because I’ve accomplished something extraordinary. I wrote this book because I’ve achieved something quite ordinary, which doesn’t happen to most kids who grow up like me. You see, I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember. I have, to put it mildly, a complex relationship with my parents, one of whom has struggled with addiction for nearly my entire life. My grandparents, neither of whom graduated from high school, raised me, and few members of even my extended family attended college. The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future—that if they’re lucky, they’ll manage to avoid welfare; and if they’re unlucky, they’ll die of a heroin overdose, as happened to dozens in my small hometown just last year.

所以我寫這本書不是因為我取得了非凡的成就。我寫這本書是因為我取得了一些非常平凡的成就，這在大多數像我一樣長大的孩子身上都不會發生。你看，我在鐵鏽地帶長大，在俄亥俄州的一個鋼鐵小鎮，從我記事起，這個小鎮就一直在失去工作和希望。委婉地說，我與父母的關係很複雜，其中一位幾乎一生都在與毒癮作鬥爭。我的爺爺奶奶都沒有高中畢業，他們撫養我長大，甚至我的大家庭也很少有人上大學。統計數據告訴你，像我這樣的孩子面臨著一個嚴峻的未來——如果他們幸運的話，他們會設法避免福利;如果他們運氣不好，他們會死於海洛因過量，就像去年在我的小家鄉發生的幾十個人一樣。

I was one of those kids with a grim future. I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me. Today people look at me, at my job and my Ivy League credentials, and assume that I’m some sort of genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bullshit. Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me.

我是那些前途渺茫的孩子之一。我差點從高中畢業。我幾乎屈服於周圍每個人所懷有的深深的憤怒和怨恨。今天，人們看著我，看著我的工作和我的常春藤盟校證書，認為我是某種天才，只有真正非凡的人才能走到今天。恕我直言，我認為這種理論是一堆廢話。無論我有什麼才能，我幾乎都揮霍殆盡，直到少數有愛心的人救了我。

That is the real story of my life, and that is why I wrote this book. I want people to know what it feels like to nearly give up on yourself and why you might do it. I want people to understand what happens in the lives of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. I want people to understand the American Dream as my family and I encountered it. I want people to understand how upward mobility really feels. And I want people to understand something I learned only recently: that for those of us lucky enough to live the American Dream, the demons of the life we left behind continue to chase us.

這就是我生命中的真實故事，這就是我寫這本書的原因。我想讓人們知道幾乎放棄自己的感覺，以及你為什麼要這樣做。我希望人們了解窮人生活中發生的事情，以及精神和物質貧困對他們的孩子造成的心理影響。我希望人們理解美國夢，因為我的家人和我遇到了它。我希望人們瞭解向上流動的真實感受。我希望人們明白我最近才學到的東西：對於我們這些有幸實現美國夢的人來說，我們留下的生活惡魔繼續追趕我們。

There is an ethnic component lurking in the background of my story. In our race-conscious society, our vocabulary often extends no further than the color of someone’s skin—“black people,” “Asians,” “white privilege.” Sometimes these broad categories are useful, but to understand my story, you have to delve into the details. I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs of the Northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition—their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.

在我的故事背景中潛伏著種族成分。在我們這個種族意識強的社會中，我們的詞彙往往只限於某人的膚色——“黑人”、“亞洲人”、“白人特權”。有時這些廣泛的類別是有用的，但要理解我的故事，你必須深入研究細節。我可能是白人，但我不認同東北的WASP。相反，我認同數百萬沒有大學學位的蘇格蘭-愛爾蘭血統的美國工人階級白人。對這些人來說，貧窮是家庭傳統——他們的祖先是南方奴隸經濟的臨時工，之後是佃農，之後是煤礦工人，以及近代的機械師和磨坊工人。美國人稱他們為鄉巴佬、鄉巴佬或白色垃圾。我稱他們為鄰居、朋友和家人。

The Scots-Irish are one of the most distinctive subgroups in America. As one observer noted, “In traveling across America, the Scots-Irish have consistently blown my mind as far and away the most persistent and unchanging regional subculture in the country. Their family structures, religion and politics, and social lives all remain unchanged compared to the wholesale abandonment of tradition that’s occurred nearly everywhere else.”¹ This distinctive embrace of cultural tradition comes along with many good traits—an intense sense of loyalty, a fierce dedication to family and country—but also many bad ones. We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether the difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most important, how they talk. To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.

蘇格蘭-愛爾蘭人是美國最具特色的亞群之一。正如一位觀察家所指出的那樣，“在美國旅行時，蘇格蘭-愛爾蘭人一直讓我大吃一驚，因為它是該國最持久和最不變的區域亞文化。他們的家庭結構、宗教和政治以及社會生活都保持不變，而幾乎在其他地方都發生了對傳統的全面拋棄。¹這種對文化傳統的獨特擁抱伴隨著許多好的特質——強烈的忠誠感、對家庭和國家的強烈奉獻——但也有許多壞的特質。我們不喜歡外人或與我們不同的人，無論區別在於他們的外表、行為方式，還是最重要的是，他們說話的方式。要瞭解我，你必須明白我本質上是一個蘇格蘭-愛爾蘭鄉巴佬。

If ethnicity is one side of the coin, then geography is the other. When the first wave of Scots-Irish immigrants landed in the New World in the eighteenth century, they were deeply attracted to the Appalachian Mountains. This region is admittedly huge—stretching from Alabama to Georgia in the South to Ohio to parts of New York in the North—but the culture of Greater Appalachia is remarkably cohesive. My family, from the hills of eastern Kentucky, describe themselves as hillbillies, but Hank Williams, Jr.—born in Louisiana and an Alabama resident—also identified himself as one in his rural white anthem “A Country Boy Can Survive.” It was Greater Appalachia’s political reorientation from Democrat to Republican that redefined American politics after Nixon. And it is in Greater Appalachia where the fortunes of working-class whites seem dimmest. From low social mobility to poverty to divorce and drug addiction, my home is a hub of misery.

如果種族是硬幣的一面，那麼地理就是另一面。當第一波蘇格蘭-愛爾蘭移民在十八世紀登陸新大陸時，他們被阿巴拉契亞山脈深深吸引。誠然，這個地區幅員遼闊——從阿拉巴馬州到南部的喬治亞州，再到俄亥俄州，再到北部的紐約部分地區——但大阿巴拉契亞的文化卻非常有凝聚力。我的家人來自肯塔基州東部的山區，他們自稱是鄉巴佬，但小漢克·威廉姆斯（Hank Williams， Jr.）出生於路易士安那州，是阿拉巴馬州的居民，在他的鄉村白人歌曲《一個鄉下男孩可以生存》（A Country Boy Can Survive）中也認為自己是鄉巴佬。正是大阿巴拉契亞從民主黨到共和黨的政治重新定位重新定義了尼克鬆之後的美國政治。在大阿巴拉契亞地區，工人階級白人的命運似乎最黯淡。從低社會流動性到貧困，再到離婚和吸毒成癮，我的家是一個痛苦的中心。

It is unsurprising, then, that we’re a pessimistic bunch. What is more surprising is that, as surveys have found, working-class whites are the most pessimistic group in America. More pessimistic than Latino immigrants, many of whom suffer unthinkable poverty. More pessimistic than black Americans, whose material prospects continue to lag behind those of whites. While reality permits some degree of cynicism, the fact that hillbillies like me are more down about the future than many other groups—some of whom are clearly more destitute than we are—suggests that something else is going on.

因此，我們是一群悲觀的人也就不足為奇了。更令人驚訝的是，正如調查發現的那樣，工人階級白人是美國最悲觀的群體。比拉丁裔移民更悲觀，他們中的許多人遭受了難以想像的貧困。比美國黑人更悲觀，他們的物質前景繼續落後於白人。雖然現實允許某種程度的憤世嫉俗，但像我這樣的鄉巴佬比許多其他群體更對未來感到沮喪——其中一些人顯然比我們更貧困——這表明其他事情正在發生。

Indeed it is. We’re more socially isolated than ever, and we pass that isolation down to our children. Our religion has changed—built around churches heavy on emotional rhetoric but light on the kind of social support necessary to enable poor kids to do well. Many of us have dropped out of the labor force or have chosen not to relocate for better opportunities. Our men suffer from a peculiar crisis of masculinity in which some of the very traits that our culture inculcates make it difficult to succeed in a changing world.

確實如此。我們在社會上比以往任何時候都更加孤立，我們將這種孤立傳遞給了我們的孩子。我們的宗教已經發生了變化——圍繞著教會建立起來，這些教會重於情感言論，但輕而易舉地支援了使貧困孩子能夠取得好成績所必需的社會支援。我們中的許多人已經退出了勞動力市場，或者選擇不搬遷以獲得更好的機會。我們的男人遭受了一種特殊的男子氣概危機，在這種危機中，我們的文化灌輸的一些特徵使我們很難在不斷變化的世界中取得成功。

When I mention the plight of my community, I am often met with an explanation that goes something like this: “Of course the prospects for working-class whites have worsened, J.D., but you’re putting the chicken before the egg. They’re divorcing more, marrying less, and experiencing less happiness because their economic opportunities have declined. If they only had better access to jobs, other parts of their lives would improve as well.”

當我提到我所在社區的困境時，我經常會得到這樣的解釋：「當然，工人階級白人的前景已經惡化了，JD，但你把雞放在雞蛋之前。他們離婚的次數越來越多，結婚的次數越來越少，幸福感也越來越低，因為他們的經濟機會減少了。如果他們能更好地找到工作，他們生活的其他部分也會得到改善。

I once held this opinion myself, and I very desperately wanted to believe it during my youth. It makes sense. Not having a job is stressful, and not having enough money to live on is even more so. As the manufacturing center of the industrial Midwest has hollowed out, the white working class has lost both its economic security and the stable home and family life that comes with it.

我自己也曾經持有過這種觀點，在我年輕的時候，我非常迫切地想相信它。這是有道理的。沒有工作是有壓力的，沒有足夠的錢來維持生活更是如此。隨著中西部工業的製造業中心被掏空，白人工人階級失去了經濟保障以及隨之而來的穩定的家庭和家庭生活。

But experience can be a difficult teacher, and it taught me that this story of economic insecurity is, at best, incomplete. A few years ago, during the summer before I enrolled at Yale Law School, I was looking for full-time work in order to finance my move to New Haven, Connecticut. A family friend suggested that I work for him in a medium-sized floor tile distribution business near my hometown. Floor tile is extraordinarily heavy: Each piece weighs anywhere from three to six pounds, and it’s usually packaged in cartons of eight to twelve pieces. My primary duty was to lift the floor tile onto a shipping pallet and prepare that pallet for departure. It wasn’t easy, but it paid thirteen dollars an hour and I needed the money, so I took the job and collected as many overtime shifts and extra hours as I could.

但經驗可能是一個困難的老師，它告訴我，這個經濟不安全的故事充其量是不完整的。幾年前，在我進入耶魯大學法學院之前的那個夏天，我正在尋找全職工作，以資助我搬到康涅狄格州紐黑文市。一位家庭朋友建議我在家鄉附近的一家中型地磚分銷公司為他工作。地磚非常重：每塊地磚的重量從三到六磅不等，通常包裝在八到十二塊的紙箱中。我的主要職責是將地磚抬到運輸托盤上，併為出發準備該托盤。這並不容易，但它每小時支付 13 美元，我需要這筆錢，所以我接受了這份工作，並盡可能多地收集加班和加班時間。

The tile business employed about a dozen people, and most employees had worked there for many years. One guy worked two full-time jobs, but not because he had to: His second job at the tile business allowed him to pursue his dream of piloting an airplane. Thirteen dollars an hour was good money for a single guy in our hometown—a decent apartment costs about five hundred dollars a month—and the tile business offered steady raises. Every employee who worked there for a few years earned at least sixteen dollars an hour in a down economy, which provided an annual income of thirty-two thousand—well above the poverty line even for a family. Despite this relatively stable situation, the managers found it impossible to fill my warehouse position with a long-term employee. By the time I left, three guys worked in the warehouse; at twenty-six, I was by far the oldest.

瓷磚公司雇傭了大約十幾名員工，大多數員工都在那裡工作了很多年。一個人做了兩份全職工作，但並不是因為他必須這樣做：他在瓷磚公司的第二份工作使他能夠追求駕駛飛機的夢想。對於我們家鄉的單身人士來說，每小時13美元是一筆不錯的錢——一套像樣的公寓每月大約要花500美元——而且瓷磚生意提供了穩定的加薪。在經濟不景氣的情況下，每個在那裡工作了幾年的員工每小時至少賺十六美元，年收入達三萬二千美元——即使對於一個家庭來說，也遠高於貧困線。儘管情況相對穩定，但經理們發現不可能用長期員工來填補我的倉庫職位。當我離開時，有三個人在倉庫里工作;二十六歲時，我是迄今為止年齡最大的。

One guy, I’ll call him Bob, joined the tile warehouse just a few months before I did. Bob was nineteen with a pregnant girlfriend. The manager kindly offered the girlfriend a clerical position answering phones. Both of them were terrible workers. The girlfriend missed about every third day of work and never gave advance notice. Though warned to change her habits repeatedly, the girlfriend lasted no more than a few months. Bob missed work about once a week, and he was chronically late. On top of that, he often took three or four daily bathroom breaks, each over half an hour. It became so bad that, by the end of my tenure, another employee and I made a game of it: We’d set a timer when he went to the bathroom and shout the major milestones through the warehouse—“Thirty-five minutes!” “Forty-five minutes!” “One hour!”

有一個人，我叫他鮑勃，比我早幾個月加入瓷磚倉庫。鮑勃十九歲，有一個懷孕的女朋友。經理好心地給了女朋友一個接電話的文員職位。他們倆都是糟糕的工人。女朋友大約每三天就缺勤一次，而且從未提前通知。儘管一再警告她要改變習慣，但女友只持續了幾個月。鮑勃大約每周缺勤一次，而且他經常遲到。最重要的是，他經常每天上三四次廁所，每次都超過半小時。它變得如此糟糕，以至於在我任期結束時，我和另一位員工做了一個遊戲：當他去洗手間時，我們設置了一個計時器，並在倉庫里大喊重要的里程碑——“三十五分鐘！“四十五分鐘！”“一個小時！”

Eventually, Bob, too, was fired. When it happened, he lashed out at his manager: “How could you do this to me? Don’t you know I’ve got a pregnant girlfriend?” And he was not alone: At least two other people, including Bob’s cousin, lost their jobs or quit during my short time at the tile warehouse.

最終，鮑勃也被解僱了。當事情發生時，他猛烈抨擊他的經理：「你怎麼能這樣對我？你不知道我有一個懷孕的女朋友嗎？他並不孤單：至少還有兩個人，包括鮑勃的表弟，在我在瓷磚倉庫的短暫時間里失去了工作或辭職。

You can’t ignore stories like this when you talk about equal opportunity. Nobel-winning economists worry about the decline of the industrial Midwest and the hollowing out of the economic core of working whites. What they mean is that manufacturing jobs have gone overseas and middle-class jobs are harder to come by for people without college degrees. Fair enough—I worry about those things, too. But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.

當你談論平等機會時，你不能忽視這樣的故事。諾貝爾經濟學獎得主擔心中西部工業的衰落和白人經濟核心的空心化。他們的意思是，製造業的工作已經轉移到海外，沒有大學學位的人更難找到中產階級的工作。很公平，我也擔心這些事情。但這本書是關於另一件事的：當工業經濟向南發展時，現實中人們的生活會發生什麼。這是關於以最糟糕的方式對糟糕的環境做出反應。這是關於一種文化，這種文化越來越鼓勵社會衰敗，而不是抵消它。

The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. Too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man with every reason to work—a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way—carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here—a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America.

我在瓷磚倉庫看到的問題遠比宏觀經濟趨勢和政策更深。太多的年輕人對艱苦的工作免疫。好工作不可能在任何時間內填補。一個有充分理由工作的年輕人——一個要養活的准妻子和一個即將出生的孩子——粗心大意地把一份擁有良好健康保險的好工作扔到一邊。更令人不安的是，當一切都結束時，他以為有人對他做了什麼。這裡缺乏能動性——一種感覺，你幾乎無法控制自己的生活，並且願意責怪除了你自己之外的所有人。這與現代美國更大的經濟格局截然不同。

It’s worth noting that although I focus on the group of people I know—working-class whites with ties to Appalachia—I’m not arguing that we deserve more sympathy than other folks. This is not a story about why white people have more to complain about than black people or any other group. That said, I do hope that readers of this book will be able to take from it an appreciation of how class and family affect the poor without filtering their views through a racial prism. To many analysts, terms like “welfare queen” conjure unfair images of the lazy black mom living on the dole. Readers of this book will realize quickly that there is little relationship between that specter and my argument: I have known many welfare queens; some were my neighbors, and all were white.

值得注意的是，雖然我關注的是我認識的一群人——與阿巴拉契亞有聯繫的工人階級白人——但我並不是說我們比其他人更值得同情。這不是一個關於為什麼白人比黑人或任何其他群體有更多的抱怨的故事。話雖如此，我確實希望這本書的讀者能夠從中了解階級和家庭如何影響窮人，而不是通過種族棱鏡過濾他們的觀點。對許多分析人士來說，像「福利女王」這樣的術語讓人聯想到懶惰的黑人媽媽生活在救濟金上的不公平形象。這本書的讀者很快就會意識到，這個幽靈和我的論點之間幾乎沒有關係：我認識許多福利女王;有些是我的鄰居，而且都是白人。

This book is not an academic study. In the past few years, William Julius Wilson, Charles Murray, Robert Putnam, and Raj Chetty have authored compelling, well-researched tracts demonstrating that upward mobility fell off in the 1970s and never really recovered, that some regions have fared much worse than others (shocker: Appalachia and the Rust Belt score poorly), and that many of the phenomena I saw in my own life exist across society. I may quibble with some of their conclusions, but they have demonstrated convincingly that America has a problem. Though I will use data, and though I do sometimes rely on academic studies to make a point, my primary aim is not to convince you of a documented problem. My primary aim is to tell a true story about what that problem feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck.

本書不是學術研究。在過去的幾年裡，威廉·朱利葉斯·威爾遜（William Julius Wilson）、查理斯·默里（Charles Murray）、羅伯特·普特南（Robert Putnam）和拉傑·切蒂（Raj Chetty）撰寫了令人信服的、經過充分研究的小冊子，證明向上流動在1970年代下降，從未真正恢復，一些地區的情況比其他地區差得多（令人震驚的是：阿巴拉契亞和鏽帶得分很低），而且我在自己的生活中看到的許多現象存在於整個社會中。我可能會對他們的一些結論提出質疑，但他們已經令人信服地證明了美國有問題。雖然我會使用數據，儘管我有時確實依靠學術研究來說明觀點，但我的主要目的不是讓你相信一個有據可查的問題。我的主要目的是講述一個真實的故事，講述當你出生時這個問題掛在脖子上的感覺。

I cannot tell that story without appealing to the cast of characters who made up my life. So this book is not just a personal memoir but a family one—a history of opportunity and upward mobility viewed through the eyes of a group of hillbillies from Appalachia. Two generations ago, my grandparents were dirt-poor and in love. They got married and moved north in the hope of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. Their grandchild (me) graduated from one of the finest educational institutions in the world. That’s the short version. The long version exists in the pages that follow.

在講述這個故事時，我不能不吸引構成我生活的一群角色。因此，這本書不僅僅是一本個人回憶錄，而是一本家庭回憶錄——通過一群來自阿巴拉契亞的鄉巴佬的眼睛來看待一段關於機會和向上流動的歷史。兩代人以前，我的祖父母一貧如洗，卻相愛。他們結婚並搬到北方，希望逃離他們周圍可怕的貧困。他們的孫子（我）畢業於世界上最好的教育機構之一。這是簡短的版本。長版本存在於以下頁面中。

Though I sometimes change the names of people to protect their privacy, this story is, to the best of my recollection, a fully accurate portrait of the world I’ve witnessed. There are no composite characters and no narrative shortcuts. Where possible, I corroborated the details with documentation—report cards, handwritten letters, notes on photographs—but I am sure this story is as fallible as any human memory. Indeed, when I asked my sister to read an earlier draft, that draft ignited a thirty-minute conversation about whether I had misplaced an event chronologically. I left my version in, not because I suspect my sister’s memory is faulty (in fact, I imagine hers is better than mine), but because I think there is something to learn in how I’ve organized the events in my own mind.

雖然我有時會更改人們的名字以保護他們的隱私，但據我所知，這個故事是我所目睹的世界的完全準確的寫照。沒有複合角色，也沒有敘事捷徑。在可能的情況下，我用文件證實了細節——成績單、手寫信件、照片筆記——但我確信這個故事和任何人類記憶一樣容易出錯。事實上，當我讓我姐姐讀一份較早的草稿時，那份草稿引發了一場長達三十分鐘的談話，討論我是否按時間順序錯位了事件。我留下了我的版本，不是因為我懷疑我姐姐的記憶有問題（事實上，我認為她的記憶力比我的要好），而是因為我認為在我自己的腦海中組織事件的方式有一些東西需要學習。

Nor am I an unbiased observer. Nearly every person you will read about is deeply flawed. Some have tried to murder other people, and a few were successful. Some have abused their children, physically or emotionally. Many abused (and still abuse) drugs. But I love these people, even those to whom I avoid speaking for my own sanity. And if I leave you with the impression that there are bad people in my life, then I am sorry, both to you and to the people so portrayed. For there are no villains in this story. There’s just a ragtag band of hillbillies struggling to find their way—both for their sake and, by the grace of God, for mine.

我也不是一個公正的觀察者。你幾乎會讀到的每一個人都有嚴重的缺陷。有些人試圖謀殺其他人，有些人成功了。有些人在身體上或情感上虐待他們的孩子。許多人濫用（並且仍在濫用）藥物。但我愛這些人，即使是那些我為了自己的理智而避免與之交談的人。如果我給你留下的印象是我的生活中有壞人，那麼我很抱歉，無論是對你還是對如此描繪的人。因為這個故事中沒有惡棍。只有一群衣衫襤褸的鄉巴佬在努力尋找自己的路——既是為了他們，也是為了上帝的恩典，為了我的緣故。