“What unites Trump's voters is a sense of alienation from America's wea...” — J. D. Vance Quote

What unites Trump's voters is a sense of alienation from America's wealthy and powerful.

There are definitely some folks in my hometown who are unhappy with the way I portrayed my hometown... But I think most folks realize I wrote this book not to disparage the hometown but to really try to understand why so many kids who grew up like I did struggled.

I once interviewed my grandma for a class project about the Second World War. After 70 years filled with marriage, children, grandchildren, death, poverty and triumph, the thing about which she was unquestionably the proudest and most excited was that she and her family did their part during the war.

I'm not one of these people who thinks I know all the answers.

Disconnection or alienation from the past has political consequences.

I think the degree of alienation and despair is more universal.

I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.

'Greatest American Hero,' I really dug that as a kid because it had an alienation to it, where he was given a gift and didn't know why, and yet he was forced to do something with it, and he was very much an out-of-place character who was trying to cope with his own surroundings, and I can kind of relate to that guy.