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" 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. "
Junot Diaz
Got
Your
You
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" Being an author is always like being a well-run dictatorship - it's all one person speaking. "
Junot Diaz
Dictatorship
Always
Like
" 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
Lucky
Privilege
Think
" New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It's old, dynamic, African-American, Latino. "
Junot Diaz
Me
History
Latino
" When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling. "
Junot Diaz
Read
Wanted
Writing
" 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
Book
Past
Page
" A young person, or someone who's writing in a different way - in some ways you could say, eventually someone will find them. Eventually someone will hear them. But it's good a lot of young people persevere. Because sometimes you have to send something out a thousand times before anyone recognizes your value. "
Junot Diaz
Value
Writing
You
" 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. "
Junot Diaz
Great
Week
Memory
" My African roots made me what I am today. They're the reason I exist at all. "
Junot Diaz
Today
I Am
Exist
" 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
Like
Year
Try
" 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
Experience
People
You
" I don't think you can be from the Caribbean and not know a certain amount about the apocalypse. "
Junot Diaz
Know
You
Think
" 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. "
Junot Diaz
Why
Work
Books
" 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. "
Junot Diaz
Sister
Looks
Look
" I look most like myself... when I'm wearing my black, nerdy engineering glasses. "
Junot Diaz
Look
Most
Myself
" 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
Me
Always
Myself
" 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
Me
Moment
Prize
" I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work. "
Junot Diaz
Resources
Write
Work
" 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. "
Junot Diaz
Hidden
Way
Name
" 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
Day
Learning
Power
" I'm an immigrant and I will stay an immigrant forever. "
Junot Diaz
Will
Immigrant
Stay
" I don't think I could have tackled 'The Pura Principle' until now. It takes me about twenty years to come to term with any difficult period in my life, to get enough of a grasp on it to fictionalize it. "
Junot Diaz
Think
Now
Enough
" There is a lot of scepticism today as to whether memoir is real. But when fiction is done at a certain level there is scepticism as to whether it is really fiction. "
Junot Diaz
Really
Today
Done
" 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. "
Junot Diaz
Struggle
You
Artist
" I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey. "
Junot Diaz
Jersey
New
Kid
" 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
View
Hope
Amazing
" It took me sixteen years to write. "
Junot Diaz
Sixteen
Years
Write
" I can always tell if someone's from Harvard because they trot out their vitae. I would die at Harvard. "
Junot Diaz
Always
Someone
Die
" I guess I'm just hopelessly fascinated by the realities that you can assemble out of connected fragments. "
Junot Diaz
Just
Out
Guess
" 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. "
Junot Diaz
Work
Writing
Train
" I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections. "
Junot Diaz
People
Enjoy
Writing