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My African roots made me what I am today. They're the reason I exist at all.

Junot Diaz

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Junot Diaz
Age: 55
Born: 1968
Born: December 31
Faculty Member
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
Junot Diaz
African
Roots
Exist
Today
Reason
Made

More quotes by Junot Diaz

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Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.
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I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning.
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I was, as a kid, really obsessed with reading... that was about as geeky as you could possibly get.
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I just want some space to myself every now and then. Every time I’m with you I have this sense that you want something from me.
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I really am a believer that 99.99% of all the stories we need, not only as artists but as human beings, not only as writers but as readers, haven't been written yet. Certainly haven't been published yet.
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A person doesn't mourn forever.
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She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.
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My thing is every generation of Americans has to answer what we call the 'Superman Question.' Superman comes, lands in America. He's illegal. He's one of these kids. He's wrapped up in a red bullfighter's cape. And you've got to decide what we're gonna do with Superman.
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Once someone gets a little escape velocity going, ain't no play in the world that will keep them from leaving.
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I prefer the 1950s where people were like, I'm a white supremacist, and that's who I am. Now people want to burn a cross on your lawn and call themselves not racists.
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Artists are not cheerleaders, and we're not the heads of tourism boards. We expose and discuss what is problematic, what is contradictory, what is hurtful and what is silenced in the culture we're in.
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I think a lot of the most interesting immigrant writing involves stepping outside of that old, dreary binary. Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker is a great example. Same goes for Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior.
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A first lesson in the fragility of love and the preternatural cowardice of men. And out of this disillusionment and turmoil sprang Beli's first adult oath, one that would follow her into adulthood, to the States and beyond. I will not serve.
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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.
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Any art worth its name requires you to be fundamentally lost for a very long time.
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I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.
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She smelled like herself, like the wind through a tree.
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The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.
Junot Diaz
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Know that in this world there's somebody who will always love you.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz