I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn’t have a safe category. Junot Diaz Read Quote
One of the many characteristics of the new is that, at first, it’s very hard to recognize it for what it is. We’re lucky if we recognize something as being new when it first appears. Usually I think we don’t have that privilege. It’s usually after the fact that we suddenly turn around and say, ‘Wow, this thing is amazing.’ Junot Diaz Read Quote
I really am a believer that 99.99% of all the stories we need, not only as artists but as human beings, not only as writers but as readers, haven’t been written yet. Certainly haven’t been published yet. Junot Diaz Read Quote
A young person, or someone who’s writing in a different way – in some ways you could say, eventually someone will find them. Eventually someone will hear them. But it’s good a lot of young people persevere. Because sometimes you have to send something out a thousand times before anyone recognizes your value. Junot Diaz Read Quote
I find infidelity interesting because it’s so revelatory about people. It’s this really silent thing. Everyone acknowledges it as a general practice, but nobody likes to go beyond that, to get down to the nitty-gritty. Junot Diaz Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I know for a fact that – it’s just the way our biases work now in the industry of literature, but certainly a short story collection does not receive the same kind of attention as a novel. Junot Diaz Read Quote
When I got heartbroken at 20, it just felt like someone had spiraled a football right into my skull. At 40, it feels like someone had driven a 757 right through me. Junot Diaz Read Quote
I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work. Junot Diaz Read Quote
