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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Junot Diaz

Think

Reality

People

" You know, I was a kid who had difficulty speaking English when I first immigrated. But in my head, when I read a book, I spoke English perfectly. No one could correct my Spanish. And I think that I retreated to books as a way, you know, to be, like, masterful in a language that was really difficult for me for many years. "

Junot Diaz

Language

You

" New Jersey is to New York what Santo Domingo is to the United States. I always felt that those two landscapes, not only just the landscapes themselves but their relationships to what we would call 'a center' or 'the center of the universe,' has in some ways defined my artistic and critical vision. "

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

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

" God bless perseverance. Because it's not easy. "

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

" It took me 11 years to struggle through one dumb book, and every day you just want to give up. But you don't find out you're an artist because you do something really well. "

" I am a person who dreads any kind of public exposure and any kind of public event. I spend all day, if I have to do a reading, preparing. "

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

" Art is not boosterism, it's not propaganda, and it's not spin, but that's not something that art does, and nor has it historically ever done it. "

" Migration gives a blank cheque to put anything you don't feel like addressing in the memory hold. No neighbours can go against the monster narrative of your family. "

Junot Diaz

Memory

Feel

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

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

" We get these lives for free. I didn't do anything to get this life, and no matter what the hardships are, it is free and, in a way, it's an extraordinary bargain. "

" 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. "

" Well, when you look at a lot of science fiction novels they're asking questions about power. There are questions about what it means to have power and what are the long-term consequences of power. "

" I mean, I'm an artist by nature; no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing. "

" 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. "

" I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning. "

Junot Diaz

Morning

Feel

" My father was a Little League dictator. That really affected me, his control-freakery, his impunity, his arbitrary unreasonable power. "

Junot Diaz

Little

Father

" It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked. "

" I love 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' That was like the only black book we read in high school. "

" In the end, all worlds, whether they're set in the future or in New Jersey of today, are fictions. Sure, you don't got to do too much work to build a mundane world, but don't get it twisted: you still got to do some work. "

" 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 think 90% of my ideas evaporate because I have a terrible memory and because I seem to be committed to not scribble anything down. As soon as I write it down, my mind rejects it. "

" Stereotypes, they're sensual, cultural weapons. That's the way that we attack people. At an artistic level, stereotypes are terrible writing. "

" Infidelity raises profound questions about intimacy. "

" There are a couple of strategies for writing about an absence or writing about a loss. One can create the person that was lost, develop the character of the fiancee. There's another strategy that one can employ, maybe riskier... Make the reader suffer the loss of the character in a more literal way. "