398 Quotes by Junot Díaz

Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and dance, what's the use of putting them down on paper.

I wrote my first sucio story, as I call them, in 1997. This was always my 'cheater's book,' my book about sucios desgraciados. My plan was to write a book about how people deal with love and loss.

I was, as a kid, really obsessed with reading... that was about as geeky as you could possibly get.

When I think about my own relationships to the women that I really loved, it feels like that love, even after we've broken up and we're no longer speaking, that love never goes away. No one told me that.

My thing is, I'm just way too harsh. It's an enormous impediment, and that's just the truth of it. It doesn't make me any better, make me any worse, it certainly isn't more valorous. I have a character defect, man.

I think 90% of my ideas evaporate because I have a terrible memory and because I seem to be committed to not scribble anything down. As soon as I write it down, my mind rejects it.

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

I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.

We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves.