Junot Diaz Quotes

If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original.

I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning.

When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That's what I always find myself short on and what I have to struggle to achieve in order that the work might live.

I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.

Personally I always feel like I could use a little more of poetry apothegmatic power in my own work but we're always lacking something.

Know that in this world there's somebody who will always love you.

I'm part of the people who are more neutral. I'm just waiting for the dust to settle so that we can turn our guns against the Republicans.

Katrina was one of those things that rips the clothes off of the guy who keeps saying he's a saint, and underneath you see that he's a monster.

Anger has a way of returning.

I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.

Just the fact that you get to live and breathe and interact with the world - that's pretty marvelous.

There is a lot of scepticism today as to whether memoir is real. But when fiction is done at a certain level there is scepticism as to whether it is really fiction.

[Donald] Trump is what happens in America every time it feels economically and politically threatened, and it encounters the limitations of its own white supremacists practices.

The truth is there ain’t no relationship in the world that doesn’t hit turbulence.

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

Being an author is always like being a well-run dictatorship - it's all one person speaking.

I love the kookiness of our speech. Speech is like wonderful magic and poetry in itself. I've always had to crib a lot from what I've heard.

The only way out is in.

You never forget the discovery years. First kisses. The first time you try certain foods.

...sometimes a start is all we ever get.

What a surprise (we all know how tolerant the tolerant are).

Ybon was the one who suggested calling the wait something else. Yeah, like what? Maybe, she said, you could call it life.

The art is just really mysterious. If I understood it more, maybe I would write more.

If we do not begin to practice the muscles of having a possessive investment in each other's oppressions, then we are in some serious trouble.

I discovered early that as an artist there was absolutely nothing wrong with being surrounded by people who were not dedicated to your field.

I was, as a kid, really obsessed with reading... that was about as geeky as you could possibly get.

I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey.

I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.

I'm an immigrant and I will stay an immigrant forever.

Infidelity raises profound questions about intimacy.

I grew up in the shadow of the Trujillato, saw how the regime had ravaged so many families.

It took me sixteen years to write.

Genre might certainly increase some of your narrative freedoms, but it also diminishes others. That's the nature of genre.

I spent my entire childhood feeling like a freak because I liked to read. It's just like, "Eh, no one else likes to read but me; I must be crazy!"

Nothing more exhilarating ... than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.

I sleep way too much and I read tremendously.

My greatest responsibility is to acknowledge the mistakes and the shortcomings of the country in which I live, to acknowledge my privileges, and to try to make it a better place.

In minority communities there's a sensitivity, often a knee-jerk reaction, to critical representations. There's a misunderstanding of what an artist does.

Well, when you look at a lot of science fiction novels they're asking questions about power. There are questions about what it means to have power and what are the long-term consequences of power.

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.

The thoughts he put in her head. Someone should’ve arrested him for it.

She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.

Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him.

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

Privilege does not operate without silence.

You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture

You keep waiting for the heaviness to leave you. You keep waiting for the moment you never think about the ex again. It doesn't come.

She had reason to doubt him; he was real good at planning but real bad at doing.

I always individuate myself from other writers who say they would die if they couldn't write. For me, I'd die if I couldn't read.

The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.