398 Quotes by Junot Díaz

My mother took care of us until my father scrammed, and then she ended up working in the small-factory sector of New Jersey with a lot of other immigrants.

The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.

What else she doesn’t know: that the man next to her would end up being her husband and the father of her two children, that after two years together he would leave her, her third and final heartbreak, and she would never love again.

Because I can’t seem to escape it. It’s a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey.

Colleagues are a wonderful thing – but mentors, that’s where the real work gets done.

There’s little question that short stories, like poetry, don’t get the respect they deserve in the culture – but what can you do? Like Canute, one cannot fight the sea, you have to go with your love, and hope one day, things change.

As artists we are here to make you uncomfortable with the complexity of your reality.

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

And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.