398 Quotes by Junot Díaz

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.

I'm not writing fairy tales or object lessons.

I think there's something really painful about your identity being entirely composed of ghosts. For me, I didn't want to be this kid whose Dominicanness was something caught utterly in the past, is an abstraction, the thing that I write about. Instead I wanted it to be, first and foremost, a thing that I lived.

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

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.

I'm one of those apocalyptics. From the start of my immigrant days, I've been fascinated by end-of-the-world stories, by outbreak narratives, and always wanted to set a world-ender on Hispaniola.

New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It's old, dynamic, African-American, Latino.

I don't think you can be from the Caribbean and not know a certain amount about the apocalypse.

I'm a product of a fragmented world.