Junot Diaz Quotes

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Junot Diaz

Profession : Writer

Birth : December 31, 1968

Long before the idea of multiculturalism, in public people could say almost anything to you and get away with it.

Junot Diaz

Every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That's just the truth of it.

Junot Diaz

I was part of that group of kids growing up in the '80s under the Reagan regime, what I used to call 'living in the shadow of Dr. Manhattan,' where we would have dreams all the time that New York City was being destroyed, and that that wall of light and destruction was rolling out and would just devour our neighborhood.

Junot Diaz

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

Junot Diaz

We get these lives for free. I didn't do anything to get this life, and no matter what the hardships are, it is free and, in a way, it's an extraordinary bargain.

Junot Diaz

I read a book a week, man. And I don't have a great memory, but I have a good memory about what I read.

Junot Diaz

We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves.

Junot Diaz

Art has a way of confronting us, of reminding us, of engaging us, in what it means to be human, and what it means to be human is to be flawed, is to be contradictory, is to be often weak, and yet despite all of these what we would consider drawbacks, that we're also quite beautiful. Spin is the opposite.

Junot Diaz

My thing is, I'm just way too harsh. It's an enormous impediment, and that's just the truth of it. It doesn't make me any better, make me any worse, it certainly isn't more valorous. I have a character defect, man.

Junot Diaz

I have three storage units, and that's no lie. Three storage units. All books.

Junot Diaz

The thing is, you try your best, and what else you got? You try your best, really, that's all you can do. And for me, my best happens really so rarely.

Junot Diaz

I'm a product of a fragmented world.

Junot Diaz

My father was a Little League dictator. That really affected me, his control-freakery, his impunity, his arbitrary unreasonable power.

Junot Diaz

I was in fact pretty much - by the larger culture, by the local culture, by people around me, by people on TV - encouraged to imagine women as something slightly inferior to men.

Junot Diaz

I seem to enjoy telling stories with a central absence, with a lacuna tunnelled into them.

Junot Diaz

Technically, I split my time between N.Y.C. and Boston.

Junot Diaz

I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.

Junot Diaz

My mother took care of us until my father scrammed, and then she ended up working in the small-factory sector of New Jersey with a lot of other immigrants.

Junot Diaz

So the kind of boy I was, or that I was told to be, you were kind of this like half-gladiator, half-dude who, you know, was supposed to have as many girls as possible and work until your heart exploded, have no fear, you know.

Junot Diaz

You know, I was a kid who had difficulty speaking English when I first immigrated. But in my head, when I read a book, I spoke English perfectly. No one could correct my Spanish. And I think that I retreated to books as a way, you know, to be, like, masterful in a language that was really difficult for me for many years.

Junot Diaz