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" 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. "

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" 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

Poetry

Words

Dance

" Even I thought I would be a writer who put something out every year. But that's not how it worked out. "

" My thing is, I'm just way too harsh. It's an enormous impediment, and that's just the truth of it. It doesn't make me any better, make me any worse, it certainly isn't more valorous. I have a character defect, man. "

Junot Diaz

Man

Character

" When I was working on 'Drown' - this was way back in the mid-'90s - I had this idea that I wanted to do another collected stories. I wanted to do another book like 'Drown' that focused specifically on infidelity. "

Junot Diaz

Back

Book

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

Junot Diaz

Forever

Nobody

" My mother took care of us until my father scrammed, and then she ended up working in the small-factory sector of New Jersey with a lot of other immigrants. "

" My thing is every generation of Americans has to answer what we call the 'Superman Question.' Superman comes, lands in America. He's illegal. He's one of these kids. He's wrapped up in a red bullfighter's cape. And you've got to decide what we're gonna do with Superman. "

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

" 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 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

People

Food

" I grew up in the shadow of the Trujillato, saw how the regime had ravaged so many families. "

" 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. "

" I mean, look, we're living in a country where you can't have a non-denominational response. If you're slightly critical of either party, all of the partisans jump on you like you're a lunatic. "

" I always individuate myself from other writers who say they would die if they couldn't write. For me, I'd die if I couldn't read. "

Junot Diaz

Always

Myself

" 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. "

" 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

Original

You

" I think the average guy thinks they're pro-woman, just because they think they're a nice guy and someone has told them that they're awesome. But the truth is far from it. "

" '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. "

" 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. "

" When I enter that higher-order space that's required to write, I'm a better human. For whatever my writing is, wherever it's ranked, it definitely is the one place that I get to be beautiful. "

" I'm one of those apocalyptics. From the start of my immigrant days, I've been fascinated by end-of-the-world stories, by outbreak narratives, and always wanted to set a world-ender on Hispaniola. "

" I can't imagine anybody who ends up being an artist who didn't pass through a time of geekiness. "

" It's extraordinary how many people read a book that's new and weird and befriend it. "

" Love is understood, in a historical way, as one of the great human vocations - but its counterspell has always been infidelity. This terrible, terrible betrayal that can tear apart not only another person, not only oneself, but whole families. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It's old, dynamic, African-American, Latino. "

Junot Diaz

History

Latino

" Books don't live and die by awards. You don't listen to an Hector Lavoe album because it won some awards. "

" 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. "

" For me it's a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honouring and making for a brief moment short fiction the centre of the literary universe. "

Junot Diaz

Moment

Prize