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Privilege does not operate without silence.

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
Operate
Privilege
Silence
Doe
Without

More quotes by Junot Diaz

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She had reason to doubt him he was real good at planning but real bad at doing.
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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.
Junot Diaz
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I can see myself watching him shave every morning. And at other time I see us in that house and see how one bright day (or a day like this, so cold your mind shifts every time the wind does) he will wake up and decide it's all wrong. I'm sorry, he'll say. I have to leave now.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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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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As expected: she, the daughter of the Fall, recipient of its heaviest radiation, loved atomically.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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Of course we all know that's not how life works. The novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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In fact, looking at the darkest sides of the United States has only made me appreciate the things that we do right, the things that we do beautifully. We are, for all of our mistakes and all of our crimes, a remarkable place.
Junot Diaz
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We get so many people saying short fiction is not economical, that it doesn't sell but there are so many of us enjoying writing it and reading it. So it's wonderful to be around people who love short fiction too - it's like hanging around with my tribe.
Junot Diaz
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Out of nowhere you said, I love you. For whatever it's worth.
Junot Diaz
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Dominican men are told to look at women all the time, but they're definitely not told to see them.
Junot Diaz
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I grew up in the shadow of the Trujillato, saw how the regime had ravaged so many families.
Junot Diaz
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...one of those very bad men that not even postmodernism can explain away.
Junot Diaz
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I sleep way too much and I read tremendously.
Junot Diaz
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I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey.
Junot Diaz
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I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.
Junot Diaz
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God bless perseverance. Because it's not easy.
Junot Diaz