I think that distance is good for some people for certain projects. I mean this is sort of a dynamic question. Some projects require more distance than others, some don't require it at all. Sometimes you need it and sometimes you don't. Junot Diaz More Quotes by Junot Diaz More Quotes From Junot Diaz Beli at thirteen believed in love like a seventy-year-old widow who's been abandoned by family, husband, children and fortune believes in God. Junot Diaz husband believe children I prefer the 1950s where people were like, "I'm a white supremacist, and that's who I am." Now people want to burn a cross on your lawn and call themselves not racists. Junot Diaz who-i-am white people 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 celebrate moments fiction I always think about myself as a writer; that comes out of being a reader first, and I don't think I kind of got to really playing with language in any formal way probably until I was in my mid-twenties. Junot Diaz twenties way thinking Stereotypes, they're sensual, cultural weapons. That's the way that we attack people. At an artistic level, stereotypes are terrible writing. Junot Diaz sensual writing people She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life. Junot Diaz girlfriend loss love Cities produce love and yet feel none. A strange thing when you think about it, but perhaps fitting. Cities need that love more than most of us care to imagine. Cities, after all, for all their massiveness, all their there-ness, are acutely vulnerable. Junot Diaz cities needs thinking It's exactly at these moments, when all hope has vanished, that prayer has dominion. Junot Diaz dominion moments prayer 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 writing mean book You can't regret the life you didn't lead. Junot Diaz regret I find reading to be a delight, a source of comfort, a way to explore. Junot Diaz delight reading comfort 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 two book thinking 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 writing trying book I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try. Junot Diaz next trying hands And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end. Junot Diaz break-up love relationship [Donald] Trump is explained with the intersection of a number of things: our economic crisis, the way it's easier to blame immigrants, with the happenstance that he discovered that by bashing Latino immigrants and characterizing them as "rapists" and "murderers" and "scumbags," suddenly he's got this groundswell of support from a group of people who were raised on this vocabulary. Junot Diaz vocabulary numbers people Even if you didn't come from another country, the idea of how do you make a home somewhere new is common to anyone who's either going to college, shifting towns. Junot Diaz college home country [The biggest disappointment is] that he [Barack Obama] deported everybody and their grandmother. Junot Diaz barack grandmother disappointment 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 kids book thinking 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. Junot Diaz vision new-york two