Quote

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.

Junot Diaz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Junot Diaz
Age: 55
Born: 1968
Born: December 31
Faculty Member
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
Junot Diaz
Would
Male
Mega
Like
Males
Nerds
Writers
Masculinity
Color
Nerd
Relationship
Listened
Talk
Bizarre
Way
Surrounded
Never
Incredibly

More quotes by Junot Diaz

Image
Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done.
Junot Diaz
Image
This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.
Junot Diaz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.
Junot Diaz
Image
The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck. The baseline is it takes so long for you to work those atrophied muscles - for you to get on parity with what women's representations of men are.
Junot Diaz
Image
She smelled like herself, like the wind through a tree.
Junot Diaz
Image
As expected: she, the daughter of the Fall, recipient of its heaviest radiation, loved atomically.
Junot Diaz
Image
I think that America is such an incredibly dynamic place because of immigration. We fundamentally have been a culture that's been put together from the explosions of other cultures. But it's hard for us to see. We have blinded ourselves to the reality of what our country is.
Junot Diaz
Image
The world should always be concerned whenever a vast human rights violation occurs anywhere on the planet.
Junot Diaz
Image
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
Image
Technically, I split my time between N.Y.C. and Boston.
Junot Diaz
Image
I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing was an outgrowth of that.
Junot Diaz
Image
I think men spend so much time passing for being men. There's a sense among many writers of color that the most invisible figure that was sitting between all of us was the nerd. But it was the thing we weren't saying, that people were afraid to say, like, Yo, what we do is nerdy by definition.
Junot Diaz
Image
Out of nowhere you said, I love you. For whatever it's worth.
Junot Diaz
Image
The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.
Junot Diaz
Image
Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.
Junot Diaz
Image
You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There's a lot out there.
Junot Diaz
Image
For kind of sophisticated art I'm interested in, the larger structural rebuke has to be so subtle that it has to be distributed at an almost sub-atomic level. Otherwise, you fall into the kind of preachy, moralistic fable that I don't think makes for good literature.
Junot Diaz
Image
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