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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
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
Reflection
Deny
Level
Levels
Human
Humans
Monster
Make
Monsters
Cultural
More quotes by Junot Diaz
It was like being at the bottom of an ocean, she said. There was no light and a whole ocean crushing down on you. But most people had gotten so used to it they thought it normal, they forgot even that there was a world above.
Junot Diaz
It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq.)
Junot Diaz
In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.
Junot Diaz
She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.
Junot Diaz
As expected: she, the daughter of the Fall, recipient of its heaviest radiation, loved atomically.
Junot Diaz
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.
Junot Diaz
You can't regret the life you didn't lead.
Junot Diaz
I find reading to be a delight, a source of comfort, a way to explore.
Junot Diaz
I think a lot of the most interesting immigrant writing involves stepping outside of that old, dreary binary. Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker is a great example. Same goes for Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior.
Junot Diaz
Used to be in the old days, only the pulp writers wrote like machines. Now everybody is expected to be literary John Henrys. So in that context someone like me is an anomaly.
Junot Diaz
I grew up in the shadow of the Trujillato, saw how the regime had ravaged so many families.
Junot Diaz
The idea that America has cornered the market on anti-immigration is ridiculous. It's a global phenomenon.
Junot Diaz
I never hear white writers get asked, 'Do you worry about how you represent white people?'
Junot Diaz
A young person, or someone who's writing in a different way - in some ways you could say, eventually someone will find them. Eventually someone will hear them. But it's good a lot of young people persevere. Because sometimes you have to send something out a thousand times before anyone recognizes your value.
Junot Diaz
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.
Junot Diaz
I have three storage units, and that's no lie. Three storage units. All books.
Junot Diaz
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.
Junot Diaz
New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It's old, dynamic, African-American, Latino.
Junot Diaz
- Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself. - But your yourself sucks! - It is, lamentably, all I have.
Junot Diaz
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.
Junot Diaz
