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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.

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
Live
Acknowledge
Country
Privilege
Trying
Mistakes
Make
Greatest
Mistake
Responsibility
Place
Privileges
Better
Shortcomings

More quotes by Junot Diaz

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New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It's old, dynamic, African-American, Latino.
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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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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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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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Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.
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So the kind of boy I was, or that I was told to be, you were kind of this like half-gladiator, half-dude who, you know, was supposed to have as many girls as possible and work until your heart exploded, have no fear, you know.
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My father was a trigamist he supported three families. We were never not poor.
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We can speculate. Last time I checked, the future doesn't take my advice.
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John Carter was also one of our first recognizable superhumans and there is little doubt that his extraordinary physical feats inspired Superman's creators. Remember: before Superman could fly or turn back time, he was nothing less than an earthbound crime-fighting John Carter in tights.
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Being an author is always like being a well-run dictatorship - it's all one person speaking.
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It took me sixteen years to write.
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Love is the great test of the human. The human is tested by our ability to withstand love. Love is so difficult, it is so challenging, it demands of us that we wreck it with ourselves. It demands of us an honesty that few of us could sustain.
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I act most like myself... when I'm in my hometown, Santo Domingo. I try to get there about five times a year.
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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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I always think about myself as a writer that comes out of being a reader first, and I don't think I kind of got to really playing with language in any formal way probably until I was in my mid-twenties.
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The truth is there ain’t no relationship in the world that doesn’t hit turbulence.
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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.
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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.
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Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.
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Infidelity raises profound questions about intimacy.
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