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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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Junot Diaz
Age: 55
Born: 1968
Born: December 31
Faculty Member
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
Junot Diaz
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Tables
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Treated
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National
Susan
Always
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More quotes by Junot Diaz

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I mean in the community that I grew up in, you know, a very, you know, mixed, almost entirely African Diaspora community, one of the things that we were not ever supposed to say was how much self-hatred and colorism determined and guided what we would call our desire. In other words, what we would consider beautiful.
Junot Diaz
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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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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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It took me sixteen years to write.
Junot Diaz
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A person doesn't mourn forever.
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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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
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You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture. That's what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma- she stooped to pick up her purse and your heart flew out of you.
Junot Diaz
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Once someone gets a little escape velocity going, ain't no play in the world that will keep them from leaving.
Junot Diaz
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I don't think you can be from the Caribbean and not know a certain amount about the apocalypse.
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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I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning.
Junot Diaz
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I never hear white writers get asked, 'Do you worry about how you represent white people?'
Junot Diaz
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She's applying her lipstick I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.
Junot Diaz
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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
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John Carter was also one of our first recognizable superhumans and there is little doubt that his extraordinary physical feats inspired Superman's creators. Remember: before Superman could fly or turn back time, he was nothing less than an earthbound crime-fighting John Carter in tights.
Junot Diaz
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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.
Junot Diaz
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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
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You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There's a lot out there.
Junot Diaz
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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