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It took me sixteen years to write.

Junot Diaz

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Junot Diaz
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: December 31
Faculty Member
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
Junot Diaz
Sixteen
Took
Write
Writing
Years

More quotes by Junot Diaz

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I'm not writing fairy tales or object lessons.
Junot Diaz
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The world should always be concerned whenever a vast human rights violation occurs anywhere on the planet.
Junot Diaz
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It was like being at the bottom of an ocean, she said. There was no light and a whole ocean crushing down on you. But most people had gotten so used to it they thought it normal, they forgot even that there was a world above.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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We hide so well. This is the bottom line: how hidden is male subjectivity? Name five books where male subjectivity is produced in an honest way.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq.)
Junot Diaz
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Poor Oscar. Without even realizing it he'd fallen into one of those Let's Be Friends Vortexes, the bane of nerdboys everywhere. These relationships were love's version of a stay in the stocks, in you go, plenty of misery guaranteed and what you got out of it besides bitterness and heartbreak nobody knows. Perhaps some knowledge of self and women.
Junot Diaz
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I never hear white writers get asked, 'Do you worry about how you represent white people?'
Junot Diaz
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Books don't live and die by awards. You don't listen to an Hector Lavoe album because it won some awards.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't been pretty damn cool.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.
Junot Diaz
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The truth is there ain’t no relationship in the world that doesn’t hit turbulence.
Junot Diaz
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Privilege does not operate without silence.
Junot Diaz
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The half-life of love is forever.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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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
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'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.
Junot Diaz