Junot Diaz Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• My art feels like it's real disobedient. I can fill notebooks with observations and maybe they find their way into the work unconsciously, which is great. I've never been able to directly plug, like to take a little snip that I've picked up on the street and transfer it into a story. I don't know what's wrong, but it never works that way.

  Junot Diaz

  Notebook, Art, Real

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing was an outgrowth of that.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, School, High School

  "The return of the young master". Interview with Edward Marriott, www.theguardian.com. February 10, 2008.

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

  Junot Diaz

  Harvard, Dies, Ifs

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• Mexico City is the center of art and culture and politics and has been and continues to be for Latin America in a way that I think really called to me as an artistic person, as someone that was interested in the politics of Latin America, you know. God, every single famous person in Latin American history and art and politics seems to have found their way to Mexico City.

  Junot Diaz

  Art, Latin, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• 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.

  Junot Diaz

  Reading, Events, Kind

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• The body is what reminds us on a daily basis that we're human. The body defies us, it betrays us, we have to struggle with it, you know. And it reveals in curious and in abiding ways how we are not perfect.

  Junot Diaz

  Struggle, Perfect, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• 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

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• 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.

  Junot Diaz

  Art, Doe, Done

  "Author Explains Tales Of New Vision, New Life". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. June 10, 2009.

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• I'm really into the rights of immigrants, the rights of the working poor. I'm one of those little activist types. I probably would have just gone to law school. And the scary part is that I was one of those kids who always tested really well. You put a test in front of me, and I would have been like do-do-do-do-do. I probably would have been some community lawyer somewhere - if anything, that's probably what I would have been doing.

  Junot Diaz

  School, Kids, Law

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Any art worth its name requires you to be fundamentally lost for a very long time.

  Junot Diaz

  Art, Names, Long

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

  Junot Diaz

  Accomplishment, Outsiders, Lists

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• My African roots made me what I am today. They're the reason I exist at all.

  Junot Diaz

  Roots, Today, Reason

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

  Junot Diaz

  Lying, Book, Three

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• And because love, real love, is not so easily shed.

  Junot Diaz

  Real, Love Is, Real Love

  Junot Diaz (2012). “This Is How You Lose Her”, p.102, Faber & Faber

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• You're Dominican only if you do this, this, and that. And if you do this and that, you'll be accepted to a certain degree and if you don't, people will scorn you for it.

  Junot Diaz

  People, Degrees, Accepted

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

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• I was really drawn to thinking about the women in my life. Thinking about my mother, who's a very powerful force on me. And I have these two very strong sisters who took up a lot of imaginary space in my life.

  Junot Diaz

  Mother, Strong, Powerful

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

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• Dominican men are told to look at women all the time, but they're definitely not told to see them.

  Junot Diaz

  Men, Looks

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

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• I always had a sense that I would fall in love with Tokyo. In retrospect I guess it's not that surprising. I was of the generation that had grown up in the '80s when Japan was ascendant (born aloft by a bubble whose burst crippled its economy for decades), and I'd fed on a steady diet of anime and samurai films.

  Junot Diaz

  Falling In Love, Anime, Japan

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• You said i could call you when i wanted but that you wouldn’t call me. you have to decide where and when, you said. if you leave it up to me i’ll want to see you every day. At least you were honest, which is more than i can say for me.

  Junot Diaz

  Want, Honest, Said

  Junot Diaz (2012). “This Is How You Lose Her”, p.50, Faber & Faber

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• 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

  Writing, People, Different

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• 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

  Writing, Calling, Freshman

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• If you're a status quo writer, you're considered to not be political but that's as political as if you're a progressive writer. Some politics are asked to show their passports and others aren't. In the Dominican Republique, if you're slightly progressive, people have a lot of suspicions that you're up to some sort of conspiracy, that this is some sort of plot. On the other hand, if you're conservative and mainstream, people tend to take that as a given and don't notice the politics.

  Junot Diaz

  People, Political, Conservative

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• An ear will never do you wrong, but I know writers who... most of the language they use is just extracted language from other languages they've read. I am a big-time reader, but I mix and match.

  Junot Diaz

  Use, Ears, Language

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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