Top 50 Jessica Bruder Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Would you rather have food or dental work? Pay your mortgage or your electric bill? Make a car payment or buy medicine? Cover rent or student loans? Purchase warm clothes or gas for your commute?”

— Jessica Bruder

2. “The last free place in America is a parking spot.”

— Jessica Bruder

3. “Being human means yearning for more than subsistence. As much as food or shelter, we require hope.”

— Jessica Bruder

4. “A deepening class divide makes social mobility all but impossible. The result is a de facto caste system. This is not only morally wrong but also tremendously wasteful. Denying access to opportunity for large segments of the population means throwing away vast reserves of talent and brainpower. It’s also been shown to dampen economic growth.”

— Jessica Bruder

5. “Some call them “homeless.” The new nomads reject that label. Equipped with both shelter and transportation, they’ve adopted a new word. They refer to themselves, quite simply, as “houseless.”

— Jessica Bruder

6. “But for them – as for anyone – survival isn’t enough. So what began as a last-ditch effort has become a battle cry for something greater. Being human means yearning for more than subsistence. As much as food or shelter, we require hope.”

— Jessica Bruder

7. “How does a hardworking sixty-four-year-old-woman end up without a house or a permanent place to stay, relying on unpredictable low-wage work to survive? Living in a mile-high alpine wilderness, with intermittent snow and maybe mountain lions in a tiny trailer, scrubbing toilets at the mercy of employers who, on a whim, could cut her hours or even fire her? What does the future look like for someone like that?”

— Jessica Bruder

8. “Americans now fear outliving their assets more than they fear dying.”

— Jessica Bruder

9. “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops,” reflected the late writer Stephen Jay Gould.”

— Jessica Bruder

10. “The truth as I see it is that people can both struggle and remain upbeat simultaneously, through even the most soul-testing of challenges.”

— Jessica Bruder

11. “People come and go in your life. You don’t get to hang onto them forever.”

— Jessica Bruder

12. “Many hoped life on the road would be an escape from an otherwise empty future.”

— Jessica Bruder

13. “The capitalists don’t want anyone living off their economic grid.”

— Jessica Bruder

14. “The top 1 percent now makes eighty-one times what those in the bottom half do, when you compare average earnings. For American adults on the lower half of the income ladder – some 117 million of them – earnings haven’t changed since the 1970s.”

— Jessica Bruder

15. “Woodswoman: Living Alone in the Adirondack Wilderness and Linda devoured it, marveling at the independence and frugality of the author, ecologist Anne LaBastille, who was inspired by Walden and built her own cabin using just $600 worth of logs. Next she started Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, an entrepreneurial self-help tome that she scoured for advice on building a fulfilling future.”

— Jessica Bruder

16. “Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country with a cheap labor force where we don’t have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. This American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world.”

— Jessica Bruder

17. “Inevitably bouts with obstacles offer discouragement as you cut every tether holding you from freedom.”

— Jessica Bruder

18. “The truth as I see it is that people can both struggle and remain upbeat simultaneously, through even the most soul-testing of challenges. This doesn’t mean they’re in denial. Rather, it testifies to the remarkable ability of humankind to adapt, to seek meaning and kinship when confronted with adversity.”

— Jessica Bruder

19. “Whatever you want to call them, workampers ride a national circuit of jobs extending coast to coast and up into Canada, a shadow economy created by hundreds of employers posting classified ads on websites with names like Workers on Wheels and Workamper News.”

— Jessica Bruder

20. “Bleary-eyed, they find places to pull off the road and rest. In Walmart parking lots. On quiet suburban streets. At truck stops, amid the lullaby of idling engines. Then in the early morning hours – before anyone notices – they’re back on the highway. Driving on, they’re secure in this knowledge: The last free place in America is a parking spot.”

— Jessica Bruder

21. “You are finally debt free and living in your forever home! No more freezing in the desert or in Kansas! No more cramped spaces. Like I always say when I hang up the phone: I love you Patti. I will miss you dearly.”

— Jessica Bruder

22. “What parts of this life are you willing to give up, so you can keep on living?”

— Jessica Bruder

23. “During one long reporting trip, I had to get a prescription refilled. My doctor called a drugstore. Later he told me that, when the pharmacist demanded my home address, he didn’t know how to answer and blurted out, “She’s living in a van!” The pharmacist let it slide, but the episode made me think. In America, if you don’t have an address, you’re not a real person.”

— Jessica Bruder

24. “A third worker boasted of walking 547 miles in ten weeks of work. He was later topped by another, who posted a Fitbit log showing 820 miles in twelve-and-a-half weeks.”

— Jessica Bruder

25. “Today the United States has the most unequal society of all developed nations.”

— Jessica Bruder

26. “The Work Opportunity Tax Credit.”

— Jessica Bruder

27. “Sameer and LaVonne were not naive. They know that, in the eyes of the law, they are homeless. But who can live under the weight of that word? The term “homeless” has metastasized beyond its literal definition, becoming a terrible threat. It whispers: Exiles. The Fallen. The Other. Those Who Have Nothing Left. “Our society’s untouchables,” LaVonne suggested on her blog.”

— Jessica Bruder

28. “What was his plan for the future? I asked. “Don’t die. Don’t get old,” he said. “I don’t know.” If things got desperate, he added, a niece and nephew had offered to take him in.”

— Jessica Bruder

29. “In many ways we modern day vandwellers are just like the Mountain Men of old: We need to be alone and on the move, but we equally need to occasionally gather together and make connections with like-minded people who understand us.”

— Jessica Bruder

30. “Most who face this dilemma will not end up dwelling in vehicles. Those who do are analogous to what biologists call an “indicator species” – sensitive organisms with the capacity to signal much larger shifts in an ecosystem.”

— Jessica Bruder

31. “And in a culture where economic misfortune was blamed largely on its victims, Bob offered them encouragement instead of opprobrium.”

— Jessica Bruder

32. “One guy at a Rubber Tramp Rendezvous campfire was horrified to learn I hadn’t yet read Travels with Charley; the next day he arrived at the van to lend me a paperback. Other entries in the literary canon of this subculture included Blue Highways by William Least Heat- Moon, Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and Wild by Cheryl Strayed.”

— Jessica Bruder

33. “These indignities underscore a larger question: When do impossible choices start to tear people – a society – apart?”

— Jessica Bruder

34. “Today the United States has the most unequal society of all developed nations. America’s level of inequality is comparable to that of Russia, China, Argentina, and the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

— Jessica Bruder

35. “When I stopped to use the restroom, the inside of my stall had a chart with a color palette ranging from pale yellow to terrifying puce. It instructed me to find the shade that matched my urine and suggested that I should be drinking more water.”

— Jessica Bruder

36. “And there is hope on the road. It’s a by-product of forward momentum. A sense of opportunity, as wide as the country itself.”

— Jessica Bruder

37. “In the widening gap between credits and debits hangs a question: What parts of this life are you willing to give up, so you can keep on living? Most who face this dilemma will not end up dwelling in vehicles. Those who do are analogous to what biologists call an “indicator species” – sensitive organisms with the capacity to signal much larger shifts in an ecosystem.”

— Jessica Bruder

38. “It took the Great Depression to make retirement into a reality in the United States. There were too many workers, too few jobs, and a consequent sense that the elderly needed to be nudged out of the labor pool.”

— Jessica Bruder

39. “She talked about getting some Pam cooking spray – or WD-40, but Pam was cheaper – because coating the walls of the toilet chutes with it makes waste less likely to stick.”

— Jessica Bruder

40. “I mean, I’ve never had any problem finding jobs ever, but the work is at these slave wages,” David said. “This is the new age of retirees.” As workers like David told their stories, the Amazon encampments began to seem more and more like microcosms of a national catastrophe.”

— Jessica Bruder

41. “When Swankie arrived at an RTR session wearing a T-shirt that said “Introverts Unite: We’re Here, We’re Uncomfortable, and We Want to Go Home,” she got smiles and nods of acknowledgment all day.”

— Jessica Bruder

42. “Travels with Charley, which Lori was devouring. John Steinbeck’s tale of road-tripping in a pickup camper with his French poodle was popular among the nomads, and dog-eared copies passed from hand to hand.”

— Jessica Bruder

43. “Amazon had recruited these workers as part of a program it calls CamperForce: a labor unit made up of nomads who work as seasonal employees at several of its warehouses, which the company calls “fulfillment centers,” or FCs.”

— Jessica Bruder

44. “Meanwhile, “living in a van, or ‘vandwelling,’ is now fashionable,” proclaimed The New York Times Magazine in late 2011, adding that 1.2 million homes were predicted to be repossessed that year and noting that van sales were up 24 percent.”

— Jessica Bruder

45. “Anyway, I’m seeing my parents in their mid-sixties with no retirement, you know, everything that they built over their entire life just disappeared. And then with the recession you see that happening to more people,” Ash said. Though she’d always considered herself a “follower,” she began to worry that, even if she.”

— Jessica Bruder

46. “By moving into vans and other vehicles, he suggested, people could become conscientious objectors to the system that had failed them. They could be reborn into lives of freedom and adventure.”

— Jessica Bruder

47. “Before long her motorhome was registered and cruising south on Interstate 95. Quartzsite was less than two hours away.”

— Jessica Bruder

48. “But for them – as for anyone – survival isn’t enough.”

— Jessica Bruder

49. “An Amazon recruiting handout warns CamperForce candidates that they should be ready to lift up to fifty pounds at a time, in an environment where the temperature may sometimes exceed 90 degrees.”

— Jessica Bruder

50. “And when it comes to Social Security benefits, female recipients get on average $341 a month less than men because of lower total payroll tax contributions, an under-recognized consequence of the gender wage gap.”

— Jessica Bruder