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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
Things
Looking
Beautifully
Fact
Crimes
United
Remarkable
Facts
Mistakes
Place
Appreciate
States
Crime
Right
Mistake
Made
Sides
Darkest

More quotes by Junot Diaz

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That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads.
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...sometimes a start is all we ever get.
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I think men spend so much time passing for being men.
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You ask everybody you know: How long does it usually take to get over it? There are many formulas. One year for every year you dated. Two years for every year you dated. It's just a matter of will power: The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it.
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I was in fact pretty much - by the larger culture, by the local culture, by people around me, by people on TV - encouraged to imagine women as something slightly inferior to men.
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'Drown' was always a hybrid book. It's connected stories - partially a story collection but partially a novel. I always wanted the reader to decide which genre they thought the book belonged to more - story, novel, neither, both.
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It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.
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Privilege does not operate without silence.
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She smelled like herself, like the wind through a tree.
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Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory you won't see it often.
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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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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.
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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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Every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That's just the truth of it.
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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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When I was working on 'Drown' - this was way back in the mid-'90s - I had this idea that I wanted to do another collected stories. I wanted to do another book like 'Drown' that focused specifically on infidelity.
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She's applying her lipstick I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.
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Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.
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You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.
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'A Princess of Mars' may not have exerted the same colossal pull that Tarzan had on the global imagination, but its influence on generations of readers cannot be underestimated.
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