Top 323 Quotes & Sayings by Junot Diaz - Page 6

If you were a nerd computer geek in 1982, the amount of isolation you felt - at least what I experienced, or the kids I knew, the isolation they felt - was almost total. They were not part of society; no one thought they were cool.

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

As for my slowness as a writer - that's been a struggle, no question. We live in a culture that values and rewards machine-speed productivity. Even the arts are expected to conform to the Taylor model of productivity.

This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.

In my mind what novels do best is that they immerse us deeply into our character's world - they truly transport us deep into these spaces - but the same way you know a Hollywood movie won't end after thirty minutes, you carry in yourself the implicit contract that the novel won't throw you out of itself 'til the very end. That bulk of pages is a form of consolation, of security.

We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.

Of course we all know that's not how life works. The novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one.

I was really drawn to thinking about the women in my life. Thinking about my mother, who's a very powerful force on me. And I have these two very strong sisters who took up a lot of imaginary space in my life.

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

When you're the ones in the life raft and you have four or five women in the life raft who put it together, by the end of it your nerves are blown. The people you're going to attack are the people who are helping you, who you are holding it together with.

To produce that identity among young people required guinea pigs.

For me, the battle isn't Hillary [Clinton] vs. [Bernie] Sanders. And I understand that for some people that's the battle. But for me, more than anything, it's stopping a Republican president.

We can speculate. Last time I checked, the future doesn't take my advice.

People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.

I think men spend so much time passing for being men.

The people I know who would support [Donald] Trump are keeping their mouths shut.

People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong. I guess the best way of saying it is that no one could have survived what we survived - whether it was first extermination and slavery, then abandonment and erasure, then the series of gunboat two-bit dictatorships, followed by the final apotheosis of dictatorships, the Trujillato. You couldn't survive it without the resistance of this kind of woman.

There's a long-term tradition of white supremacy in this country. [Donald] Trump isn't something entirely new. But then there is the crisis for white supremacy in this country now where you have people of color standing up for themselves in ways that they've never stood up for themselves or at least standing up for themselves in a generational, novel way.

Used to be in the old days, only the pulp writers wrote like machines. Now everybody is expected to be literary John Henrys. So in that context someone like me is an anomaly.

As an artist you're on a journey of discovery and sometimes that journey takes a long time, doesn't subscribe to [a] train schedule, to the punch-clock. And I need to read a lot to make my pages happen.

Honestly, connecting once at the deepest level with someone, you know, once you've done that, even if your life goes to hell, man, it was really worth living.

Love is the only thing - I don't want to say that "makes it bearable" - but I feel like without the possibility of love, this place would just devour us.

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.