Junot Diaz Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Writing, Order

• Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Thinking, Two

• 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. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.

  Junot Diaz

  Dream, Book, Writing

  "Questions for Junot Díaz". Interview with Meghan O'Rourke, www.slate.com. April 8, 2008.

• You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You quote Neruda. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. Because you know in your lying cheater’s heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

  Junot Diaz

  Lying, Book, Writing

• I have three storage units, and that's no lie. Three storage units. All books.

  Junot Diaz

  Lying, Book, Three

• 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

  Book, Kids, Thinking

• A form wherein we can enjoy simultaneously what is best in both the novel and the short story form. My plan was to create a book that affords readers some of the novel's long-form pleasures but that also contains the short story's ability to capture what is so difficult about being human - the brevity of our moments, their cruel irrevocability.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Long, Stories

  Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. September 30, 2012.

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

  Junot Diaz

  Book, School, Black

  "Junot Diaz Interview: Prize-Winning Author Talks High School, Being A Nerd". Interview with Marisa Spiegel, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 1, 2012.

• But it's clear to me that us slow-poke writers are a dying breed. It's amazing how thoroughly my young writing students have internalized the new machine rhythm, the rush many of my young writers are in to publish. The majority don't want to sit on a book for four, five years. The majority don't want to listen to the silence inside and outside for their artistic imprimatur. The majority want to publish fast, publish now.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Writing, Years

  Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. September 30, 2012.

• 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

  Book, Names, Males

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• If you really want a prize, or if you really want applause, you should try to write as many books as humanly possible.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Writing, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 'Drown' was always a hybrid book. It's connected stories - partially a story collection but partially a novel. I always wanted the reader to decide which genre they thought the book belonged to more - story, novel, neither, both.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Stories, Genre

• Books are wonderful, but they aren't that powerful.

  Junot Diaz

  Powerful, Book, Wonderful

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• For my first three books the setting (or place if you will) has always been a given - N.J. and the Dominican Republic and some N.Y.C. - so from one perspective you could say that the place in my work always comes first.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Perspective, Three

  "Old friends Junot Díaz and Francisco Goldman talk shop". Barnes & Noble Review Interview, www.csmonitor.com. September 14, 2012.

• I think that most of my writer friends are really compulsive. I think that's great. It's wonderful for them. It's just not my bag. It's not the way I work. But again, it's probably why my friend has ten books out and I have two.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Thinking, Two

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  Pain, Book, Writing

• Books are surviving in this intense, fragmented, hyper-accelerated present, and my sense and hope is that things will slow down again and people will want more time for a contemplative life. There is no way people can keep up this pace. No one is happy. Two or three hours to read should not be an unattainable thing, although I hope we get to that stage without needing a corporate sponsored app to hold our hand. The utopian in me has my fingers crossed that we haven't quite figured out the digital future just yet. After all, the one thing we know about people: they always surprise.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Contemplative Life, Hands

  "Junot Díaz: a life in books" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2012.

• The thing is - do we really need another writer who writes a book every eighteen months, whether the quality is wonderful or not? I mean, maybe. But I can name twenty off the top of my head who do it. Maybe what we need is a writer like me who goes very slow, as well.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Mean, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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, Stories

  "Battling my way to a Pulitzer Prize novel" by Junot Diaz, www.cnn.com. December 4, 2009.

• The Prisoner's Wife echoes Edwidge Danticat's Farming of the Bones in the urgency in which it reminds us of the possibility of love even amidst the ruins. This is a terrifying, heart-breaking and, ultimately, important book.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Heart, Echoes

• I always wanted to read. I always thought I was going to be a historian. I would go to school and study history and then end up in law school, once, I ran out of loot trying to be a history high school teacher. But my dream was always to place myself in a situation where I was always surrounded by books.

  Junot Diaz

  Dream, Teacher, Book

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

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Awards, Albums

• 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

  Book, Ideas, Infidelity

• This country has such little sense of itself sometimes, I'm astonished. America is one of the biggest myth-making countries, whether we're talking about how many books are published, how many movies we make. But the greatest myth of all is what America is.

  Junot Diaz

  Country, Book, Talking

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. March 8, 2008.

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