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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. "

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" Art has a way of confronting us, of reminding us, of engaging us, in what it means to be human, and what it means to be human is to be flawed, is to be contradictory, is to be often weak, and yet despite all of these what we would consider drawbacks, that we're also quite beautiful. Spin is the opposite. "

Junot Diaz

Human

Weak

" To an outsider, I just seem like a list of accomplishments. To me, all there is is how often I fail. "

" Infidelity raises profound questions about intimacy. "

" When I became my masked identity I was this incredible little nerd, but in the real world I had to be this tough kid from the neighborhood. "

" 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. "

" The thing is, you try your best, and what else you got? You try your best, really, that's all you can do. And for me, my best happens really so rarely. "

" I'm not writing fairy tales or object lessons. "

" I seem to enjoy telling stories with a central absence, with a lacuna tunnelled into them. "

" I'm an immigrant and I will stay an immigrant forever. "

" Nobody warned me that when you fall in love, you really fall in love forever. "

Junot Diaz

Forever

Nobody

" 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. "

" When I got heartbroken at 20, it just felt like someone had spiraled a football right into my skull. At 40, it feels like someone had driven a 757 right through me. "

Junot Diaz

Got

Right

" We hide so well. This is the bottom line: how hidden is male subjectivity? Name five books where male subjectivity is produced in an honest way. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" Stories are hard. I have friends who knock out stories on a weekly or monthly basis, like they're running on medicinal-strength Updike. But for me a story is as daunting a prospect as a novel. "

Junot Diaz

Hard

Running

" Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done. "

" I've always thought that you don't love a country by turning a blind eye to its crimes and to a problem. The way that you love a country is by seeing everything that it's done wrong, all of its mistakes, and still thinking that it's beautiful and that it's worthy. "

" 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. "

" Let me tell you, if I could write one-tenth as fast as some of my friends, I'd be made. I'd be it. But instead I happen to be, in the tree of life of writers, down at the bottom, with the hematodes. "

Junot Diaz

Life

Fast

" I'm of African descent and my sister looks completely black, but I didn't look black. I was the super-nerdy kid who was also willing to fight. "

" In minority communities there's a sensitivity, often a knee-jerk reaction, to critical representations. There's a misunderstanding of what an artist does. "

" We have a whole bunch of young people and a whole bunch of families. Are we going to disrupt these families and tear them apart? Or are we going think, like, listen - these people are here. We've got to deal with this reality. We've got to extend the franchise. "

" I act most like myself... when I'm in my hometown, Santo Domingo. I try to get there about five times a year. "

Junot Diaz

Year

Try

" I do think that books are invaluable as a reservoir of what we call the human space. And this is why I think that, even if they're threatened, the work that they do has an incalculable merit. "

" I sleep way too much and I read tremendously. "

" I know for a fact that - it's just the way our biases work now in the industry of literature, but certainly a short story collection does not receive the same kind of attention as a novel. "

" I read a book a week, man. And I don't have a great memory, but I have a good memory about what I read. "

" I can always tell if someone's from Harvard because they trot out their vitae. I would die at Harvard. "

" 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. "