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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

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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
Writers
Masculinity
Color
Nerd
Relationship
Listened
Talk
Bizarre
Way
Surrounded
Never
Incredibly
Would
Male
Mega
Like
Males
Nerds

More quotes by Junot Diaz

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That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads.
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In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.
Junot Diaz
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I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.
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Ybon was the one who suggested calling the wait something else. Yeah, like what? Maybe, she said, you could call it life.
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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.
Junot Diaz
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Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.
Junot Diaz
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There is a lot of scepticism today as to whether memoir is real. But when fiction is done at a certain level there is scepticism as to whether it is really fiction.
Junot Diaz
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Technically, I split my time between N.Y.C. and Boston.
Junot Diaz
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Nobody warned me that when you fall in love, you really fall in love forever.
Junot Diaz
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Books don't live and die by awards. You don't listen to an Hector Lavoe album because it won some awards.
Junot Diaz
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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.
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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I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.
Junot Diaz
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To an outsider, I just seem like a list of accomplishments. To me, all there is is how often I fail.
Junot Diaz
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Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory you won't see it often.
Junot Diaz
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Know that in this world there's somebody who will always love you.
Junot Diaz
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A first lesson in the fragility of love and the preternatural cowardice of men. And out of this disillusionment and turmoil sprang Beli's first adult oath, one that would follow her into adulthood, to the States and beyond. I will not serve.
Junot Diaz
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Cities produce love and yet feel none. A strange thing when you think about it, but perhaps fitting. Cities need that love more than most of us care to imagine. Cities, after all, for all their massiveness, all their there-ness, are acutely vulnerable.
Junot Diaz
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I have a very powerful sense of place, but I have a very powerful sense of being a migrant, so it's both. It seems like I'm always leaving my home. That's part of the formula. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time.
Junot Diaz
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Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.
Junot Diaz