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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
Started
Damn
First
Pretty
Wrote
Made
Hope
Cool

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Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.
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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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The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.
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I look most like myself... when I'm wearing my black, nerdy engineering glasses.
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Even if you didn't come from another country, the idea of how do you make a home somewhere new is common to anyone who's either going to college, shifting towns.
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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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You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture. That's what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma- she stooped to pick up her purse and your heart flew out of you.
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Spin is 'something is beautiful because we say it's beautiful.'
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When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.
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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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That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads.
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I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning.
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but back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.
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Infidelity raises profound questions about intimacy.
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Part of it is eight years of a black president, and white America still lost their [minds] about that. Part of it is a Republican politics of vicious, vicious partisan [stuff] that has completely poisoned what we would call the political rhetorical sphere. All of these things come together in a perfect storm.
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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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Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done.
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Out of nowhere you said, I love you. For whatever it's worth.
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