I don't think you can be from the Caribbean and not know a certain amount about the apocalypse. Junot Diaz More Quotes by Junot Diaz More Quotes From Junot Diaz 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 diesifswriting I am a chatty person, but colossally discreet. Junot Diaz discreetpersons I can't imagine anybody who ends up being an artist who didn't pass through a time of geekiness. Junot Diaz imagineartistends 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 donedoeart 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. Junot Diaz writingmenlong 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. Junot Diaz couplewritingcharacter The Caribbean is such an apocalyptic place, whether it's the decimation of the indigenous populations by the Europeans, whether it's the importation of slaves and their subsequent being worked to death by the millions in many ways, whether it's the immigrant processes which began for many people, new worlds ending their old ones. Junot Diaz populationpeopleworld Any art worth its name requires you to be fundamentally lost for a very long time. Junot Diaz nameslongart Nobody warned me that when you fall in love, you really fall in love forever. Junot Diaz falling-in-loveforeverlove-you We all have a blind spot and it's shaped exactly like us. Junot Diaz blind-spotsspotsblind Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa. Junot Diaz hairrunningboys Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight. Junot Diaz literatureanswersgiving 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 contemplative-lifebookhands I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning. Junot Diaz milesrunningmorning You can't find intimacy - you can't find home - when you're always hiding behind masks. Intimacy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It requires a certain level of you exposing your fragmented, contradictory self to someone else. You running the risk of having your core self rejected and hurt and misunderstood. Junot Diaz hurthomerunning You whispered my full name and we fell asleep in each other's arms and I remember how the next morning you were gone, completely gone, and nothing in my bed or the house could have proven otherwise. Junot Diaz nameshousemorning Spin is 'something is beautiful because we say it's beautiful.' Junot Diaz beautiful Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the journal as one might hold a bady's beshattered diaper, as one might pinch a recently benutted condom. You glance at the offending passages. Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her. Junot Diaz offendingbabymen Technically, I split my time between N.Y.C. and Boston. Junot Diaz splitsmy-timeboston 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 malesnamesbook
