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In another universe I probably came out OK, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead.

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
Love
Came
Mad
Life
Waiting
Ahead
Like
Dark
Miles
Patch
World
Universe
Cancer
Patches
Jobs
Sea
Mile
Black
Dying
Ice
Another
Brother
Swim
Long
Probably
Ended

More quotes by Junot Diaz

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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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I think what happened to me was that I was always being taught to look, but one day I started to see. And it was because a lot of women in my life were refusing just to be looked at, to be this passive figure.
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Students teach all sorts of things but most importantly they make explicit the courage that it takes to be a learner, the courage it takes to open yourself to the transformative power of real learning and that courage I am exposed to almost every day at MIT and that I'm deeply grateful for.
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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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Nobody warned me that when you fall in love, you really fall in love forever.
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This is what I know: people's hopes go on forever.
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Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.
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I grew up in the shadow of the Trujillato, saw how the regime had ravaged so many families.
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Infidelity raises profound questions about intimacy.
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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.
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Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.
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You can't be a human without seeing.
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In the end, all worlds, whether they're set in the future or in New Jersey of today, are fictions. Sure, you don't got to do too much work to build a mundane world, but don't get it twisted: you still got to do some work.
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I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.
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Now people like Susan Sarandon are noticing that people of color live this way?! This is the way I've always lived! What's happened is that it has now reached a level of national discourse where it's on the table. But they've never minded that we were treated like this off-stage.
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I've been trying to write. I also spent a lot of time on different campuses, in conversation, helping other writers. That's what I do: I teach them writing.
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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.
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The half-life of love is forever.
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You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?
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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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