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I wring my hands because I know that as a dude, my privilege, my long-term deficiencies work against me in writing women, no matter how hard I try and how talented I am.

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
Matter
Deficiencies
Hard
Deficiency
Writing
Dude
Trying
Talented
Work
Privilege
Long
Term
Hands
Women
Wring

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I find reading to be a delight, a source of comfort, a way to explore.
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My father was a trigamist he supported three families. We were never not poor.
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A person doesn't mourn forever.
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In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace--and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.
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The anti-immigrant logic has basically saturated our world. I'm staying, and I'm fighting.
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Stories are hard. I have friends who knock out stories on a weekly or monthly basis, like they're running on medicinal-strength Updike. But for me a story is as daunting a prospect as a novel.
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Because I can't seem to escape it. It's a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey.
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Of course we all know that's not how life works. The novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one.
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I have three storage units, and that's no lie. Three storage units. All books.
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If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level any reflection of themselves
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And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.
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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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Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.
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The U.S. that I had imagined was nowhere near as crazy and as incredibly damaging and brutal and indifferent as the U.S. that we're currently living in. I thought I was being transgressive, apocalyptic, an out-there person. And then reality lapped me, it just lapped me.
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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.
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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.
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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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I mean in the community that I grew up in, you know, a very, you know, mixed, almost entirely African Diaspora community, one of the things that we were not ever supposed to say was how much self-hatred and colorism determined and guided what we would call our desire. In other words, what we would consider beautiful.
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This is what I know: people's hopes go on forever.
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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.
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