J. D. Vance

“I learned from my community how to shoot a gun, how to shoot it well. I learned how to make a damn good biscuit recipe. The trick, by the way, is frozen butter, not warm butter. But I didn't learn how to get ahead.”

“The sometimes-tough love of the Christian faith of my childhood demanded a certain amount of self-reflection and, occasionally, self-criticism.”

“We are so isolated in our own little worlds, in our own little geographies, that it's pretty hard to understand where someone else is coming from. And so I think that we have to really think about what that means as a country and, frankly, whether this segregation that we have is durable over the long run.”

“I happen to think that conservatism, when properly applied to the 21st century, could actually help everybody. And the message of Trump's campaign was obviously not super-appealing to Latino Americans, black Americans and so forth. That really bothered me.”

“Trump brings power to those who hate their lack of it, and his message is tonic to communities that have felt nothing but decline for decades.”

“We spend to pretend that we're upper class. And when the dust clears - when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity - there's nothing left over. Nothing for the kids' college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job.”

“For complicated historical and political reasons, we associate 'poor' in our public consciousness with 'black.' Terms such as 'welfare queen' and 'culture of poverty' became associated uniquely with the social maladies of African Americans in urban ghettos, despite the fact that poor whites outnumbered poor blacks.”

“Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.”

“From the Marines, from Ohio State, from Yale, from other places, people have really stepped in and ensured that they filled that social capital gap that it was pretty obvious, apparently, that I had.”

“Anger about the wars isn't the only reason voters support Mr. Trump. But his willingness to say what other G.O.P. candidates won't reflects what people like most about him: his complete break with the party elite.”

“The military is arguably the most significant social institution in our country.”

“Recently, a friend sent me the online musings of a televangelist who advised his thousands of followers that the Federal Reserve achieved satanic ends by manipulating the world's money supply. Paranoia has replaced piety.”

“Airing the family's laundry can make people upset.”

“I never wanted to be a public intellectual or a talking head.”

“It seems to me an indictment of the Republican Party that if you talk about issues of poverty and upward mobility, people assume you're a Democrat.”

“I have been waiting for someone to come along and tap into that very real frustration that exists in a very large segment of the working-class Republican base. And no one had done it until Donald Trump. I very clearly saw a void, and I knew somebody would fill it. And the moment I knew he had filled it, I knew he would win the nomination.”

“Stanford's law school application wasn't the standard combination of college transcript, LSAT score, and essays. It required a personal sign-off from the dean of your college: You had to submit a form, completed by the dean, attesting that you weren't a loser.”

“I think what Trump will be judged on by the folks that voted for him... is whether things start to get a little bit better over the next few years. And ultimately, that doesn't depend on whether Jeff Sessions is the attorney general.”

“One of the most interesting social trends of the past 20 years is the rise of residential segregation. So rich are living with rich and poor are living with poor.”

“I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me... Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me.”