Quote

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

Junot Diaz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Junot Diaz
Age: 55
Born: 1968
Born: December 31
Faculty Member
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
Junot Diaz
Kids
Enough
Dominican
Category
Categories
Neither
Safe
Black
Didn

More quotes by Junot Diaz

Image
Once someone gets a little escape velocity going, ain't no play in the world that will keep them from leaving.
Junot Diaz
Image
Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over.
Junot Diaz
Image
Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory you won't see it often.
Junot Diaz
Image
Cities produce love and yet feel none. A strange thing when you think about it, but perhaps fitting. Cities need that love more than most of us care to imagine. Cities, after all, for all their massiveness, all their there-ness, are acutely vulnerable.
Junot Diaz
Image
The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.
Junot Diaz
Image
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
Image
New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It's old, dynamic, African-American, Latino.
Junot Diaz
Image
And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.
Junot Diaz
Image
Part of it is eight years of a black president, and white America still lost their [minds] about that. Part of it is a Republican politics of vicious, vicious partisan [stuff] that has completely poisoned what we would call the political rhetorical sphere. All of these things come together in a perfect storm.
Junot Diaz
Image
I came up under [Ronald] Reagan and under [George] Bush, and what are we to do now? We are here to fight. People can run off all they want. But for me, [Donald] Trump is already in the Dominican Republic.
Junot Diaz
Image
In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.
Junot Diaz
Image
This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.
Junot Diaz
Image
I always wanted to read. I always thought I was going to be a historian. I would go to school and study history and then end up in law school, once, I ran out of loot trying to be a history high school teacher. But my dream was always to place myself in a situation where I was always surrounded by books.
Junot Diaz
Image
You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?
Junot Diaz
Image
This is what I know: people's hopes go on forever.
Junot Diaz
Image
Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.
Junot Diaz
Image
The half-life of love is forever.
Junot Diaz
Image
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.
Junot Diaz
Image
Out of nowhere you said, I love you. For whatever it's worth.
Junot Diaz
Image
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.
Junot Diaz