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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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Junot Diaz
Age: 55
Born: 1968
Born: December 31
Faculty Member
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
Junot Diaz
Kind
Sense
Pages
Budge
Would
Stories
Mark
Shortly
Past
Wouldn
Publishing
Firsts
Novel
Hadn
Book
Fine
Page
Nothing
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Damn
First
Pretty
Wrote
Made
Hope
Cool

More quotes by Junot Diaz

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As a Dominican man, you're socialized to be a playboy. You spend a lot of time being taught that women are important, but without the really positive framework of why. You figure out quickly it's because of culo (ass). But there is a sense that it's not that simple.
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A first lesson in the fragility of love and the preternatural cowardice of men. And out of this disillusionment and turmoil sprang Beli's first adult oath, one that would follow her into adulthood, to the States and beyond. I will not serve.
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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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Know that in this world there's somebody who will always love you.
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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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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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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.
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Shot at twenty-seven times - what a Dominican number.
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The world should always be concerned whenever a vast human rights violation occurs anywhere on the planet.
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I was surrounded by a lot of male writers of color who have this incredibly bizarre relationship to masculinity. It's like we were all mega-nerds but you would never know that if you listened to the way they talk about themselves.
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You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You quote Neruda. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. Because you know in your lying cheater’s heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.
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This country has such little sense of itself sometimes, I'm astonished. America is one of the biggest myth-making countries, whether we're talking about how many books are published, how many movies we make. But the greatest myth of all is what America is.
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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.
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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...one of those very bad men that not even postmodernism can explain away.
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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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People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.
Junot Diaz
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Spin is 'something is beautiful because we say it's beautiful.'
Junot Diaz
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You can't regret the life you didn't lead.
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Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory you won't see it often.
Junot Diaz