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Writer Quotes by Junot Diaz

50 Writer quotes by Junot Diaz

All Writer quotes Junot Diaz’s page

Junot Diaz observes that the only gap between published and unpublished writers is a tolerance for imperfection. He calls reading a resilient act that survives even the pull of screens. He also notes that new, weird books can quickly become friends to readers.

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It's extraordinary how many people read a book that's new and weird and befriend it.

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I seem to enjoy telling stories with a central absence, with a lacuna tunnelled into them.

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Being an author is always like being a well-run dictatorship - it's all one person speaking.

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Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

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

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The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.

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

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I'm having so much trouble with writing. Maybe if I help other people, it'll be easier for me.

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I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing…

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Even I thought I would be a writer who put something out every year. But that's not how it worked out.

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For me it's a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honouring and making for a brief moment short fiction…

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There is a lot of scepticism today as to whether memoir is real. But when fiction is done at a certain level…

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In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any…

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I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they…

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I read a book a week, man. And I don't have a great memory, but I have a good memory about what…

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Let me tell you, if I could write one-tenth as fast as some of my friends, I'd be made. I'd be it.…

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In the end, all worlds, whether they're set in the future or in New Jersey of today, are fictions. Sure, you don't…

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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…

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There are a couple of strategies for writing about an absence or writing about a loss. One can create the person that…

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The Prisoner's Wife echoes Edwidge Danticat's Farming of the Bones in the urgency in which it reminds us of the possibility of…

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A form wherein we can enjoy simultaneously what is best in both the novel and the short story form. My plan was…

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My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page…

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You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent,…

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In my mind what novels do best is that they immerse us deeply into our character's world - they truly transport us…

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Usually at the end of each story we're thrown clear out of the story's world and then we're given a new world…

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I think that most of us are aware that as writers we are seeking absences, we're seeking silences, we're seeking spaces that…

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“Better minds have said it before, but I don’t mind repeating it less well again and again: Reading, like the natural world,…

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Books are wonderful, but they aren't that powerful.

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I find reading to be a delight, a source of comfort, a way to explore.

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I think 90% of my ideas evaporate because I have a terrible memory and because I seem to be committed to not…

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If you really want a prize, or if you really want applause, you should try to write as many books as humanly…

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When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That's what I always find myself…

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“Magda was reading a book by a Trappist, in a better mood, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed,…

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I do think that books are invaluable as a reservoir of what we call the human space. And this is why I…

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I always individuate myself from other writers who say they would die if they couldn't write. For me, I'd die if I…

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In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to…

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Stories are hard. I have friends who knock out stories on a weekly or monthly basis, like they're running on medicinal-strength Updike.…

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I always think about myself as a writer; that comes out of being a reader first, and I don't think I kind…

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“Because that’s the thing about reading / books. For all their vulnerabilities and lack of pull relative to screens, reading / books…

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I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces…

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More by Junot Diaz

It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican…

Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love…

It took me sixteen years to write.

You ask everybody you know: How long does it usually take to get over it? There are many formulas. One year for every year…

Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven—where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with—he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken…

The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck. The baseline is it…

“I used to think those were the barrio rules, Latinos and blacks in, whites out —a place we down cats weren’t supposed to go.…

“I put my hand on her knee. I just wish you'd say you love me.”

I've always thought that you don't love a country by turning a blind eye to its crimes and to a problem. The way that…

“Called her a whore and attacked her walls, tearing down her posters and throwing her books everywhere. I found out because some whitegirl ran…

You're Dominican only if you do this, this, and that. And if you do this and that, you'll be accepted to a certain degree…

“Ramfis fled the country after Trujillo's death, lived dissolutely off his father's swag, and ended up dying in a car crash of his own…

If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.

“If you ask me I don't think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That's enough.”

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