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In fact, looking at the darkest sides of the United States has only made me appreciate the things that we do right, the things that we do beautifully. We are, for all of our mistakes and all of our crimes, a remarkable place.

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
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Appreciate
States
Crime
Right
Mistake
Made
Sides
Darkest
Things
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Beautifully
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United
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More quotes by 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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You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There's a lot out there.
Junot Diaz
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To an outsider, I just seem like a list of accomplishments. To me, all there is is how often I fail.
Junot Diaz
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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!
Junot Diaz
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but back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.
Junot Diaz
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Travel light. She extended her arms to embrace her house, maybe the whole world.
Junot Diaz
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It took me sixteen years to write.
Junot Diaz
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New Jersey is to New York what Santo Domingo is to the United States. I always felt that those two landscapes, not only just the landscapes themselves but their relationships to what we would call 'a center' or 'the center of the universe,' has in some ways defined my artistic and critical vision.
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
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Genre might certainly increase some of your narrative freedoms, but it also diminishes others. That's the nature of genre.
Junot Diaz
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What a surprise (we all know how tolerant the tolerant are).
Junot Diaz
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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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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.
Junot Diaz
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This is what I know: people's hopes go on forever.
Junot Diaz
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Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years.
Junot Diaz
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There are a couple of strategies for writing about an absence or writing about a loss. One can create the person that was lost, develop the character of the fiancee. There's another strategy that one can employ, maybe riskier... Make the reader suffer the loss of the character in a more literal way.
Junot Diaz
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I don't think you can be from the Caribbean and not know a certain amount about the apocalypse.
Junot Diaz
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Technically, I split my time between N.Y.C. and Boston.
Junot Diaz
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We can speculate. Last time I checked, the future doesn't take my advice.
Junot Diaz
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I write incredibly slowly. And, on top of that, I spent my entire youth and twenties working like a dog, so one of the things that happened when I finished Drown was that I got busy living. I'd never travelled, I'd never seen anything. So I did as much travelling as my job teaching would allow.
Junot Diaz