20 Quotes & Sayings By Junot Diaz

Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer and filmmaker. Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic, but left the country with his family at age seven. He has said that his writing process often starts with "a feeling...a feeling of something left undone, of something unspoken." His first book, "Drown", was published in 1998 by Viking Press. His second book, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao", was published by Doubleday in 2007 Read more

The novel was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. The book was also named best book of 2007 by numerous publications, including "The New York Times", "The Village Voice", "The Boston Globe", and "The Washington Post". It won the 2009 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

His third book, "This Is How You Lose Her" (Riverhead Books), explores the concept of identity through the lens of love and romance. It is set in New Jersey but draws heavily on Dominican culture. He was selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2009.

1
You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. 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
2
We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. Junot Diaz
3
I was part of that group of kids growing up in the '80s under the Reagan regime, what I used to call 'living in the shadow of Dr. Manhattan, ' where we would have dreams all the time that New York City was being destroyed, and that that wall of light and destruction was rolling out and would just devour our neighborhood. Junot Diaz
4
I'm still trying to figure out how to write about cancer and my family's experience with it. If I had been able to write 'The Pura Principle' back in those days, I'm positive it would have had no humor in it. Which means the story would have been false. Junot Diaz
5
My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't been pretty damn cool. Junot Diaz
6
If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original. Junot Diaz
7
Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done. Junot Diaz
8
The Caribbean is such an apocalyptic place, whether it's the decimation of the indigenous populations by the Europeans, whether it's the importation of slaves and their subsequent being worked to death by the millions in many ways, whether it's the immigrant processes which began for many people, new worlds ending their old ones. Junot Diaz
9
I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning. Junot Diaz
10
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
11
One of the many characteristics of the new is that, at first, it's very hard to recognize it for what it is. We're lucky if we recognize something as being new when it first appears. Usually I think we don't have that privilege. It's usually after the fact that we suddenly turn around and say, 'Wow, this thing is amazing.' Junot Diaz
12
People are always fascinated by infidelity because, in the end - whether we've had direct experience or not - there's part of you that knows there's absolutely no more piercing betrayal. People are undone by it. Junot Diaz
13
I always had a sense that I would fall in love with Tokyo. In retrospect I guess it's not that surprising. I was of the generation that had grown up in the '80s when Japan was ascendant (born aloft by a bubble whose burst crippled its economy for decades), and I'd fed on a steady diet of anime and samurai films. Junot Diaz
14
When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That's what I always find myself short on and what I have to struggle to achieve in order that the work might live. Junot Diaz
15
I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non- Spanish ones. Junot Diaz
16
'A Princess of Mars' may not have exerted the same colossal pull that Tarzan had on the global imagination, but its influence on generations of readers cannot be underestimated. Junot Diaz
17
Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and dance, what's the use of putting them down on paper. Junot Diaz
18
Personally I always feel like I could use a little more of poetry apothegmatic power in my own work but we're always lacking something. Junot Diaz
19
Every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That's just the truth of it. Junot Diaz