A Quote by Junot Diaz

The thing is - do we really need another writer who writes a book every eighteen months, whether the quality is wonderful or not? I mean, maybe. But I can name twenty off the top of my head who do it. Maybe what we need is a writer like me who goes very slow, as well.
I don't like to work with directors who have taken an adoption from another script writer, because it's too much: one of them writes it and then has to explain it to the other, or maybe the director sees it in a way the writer doesn't want it.
Maybe I need a catchphrase. Maybe I need a t-shirt that'll be a big sell. Maybe I need to do more with my in-ring skills. There was always something in my head like, 'I can improve this and I can improve that.'
As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration' or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.
When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.
I don't really want to say need because to me--an aggressive, liberated woman--need sounds too pathetic. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe need and want sometimes go together. Maybe I do need and want a man. *************************************************************************************************************************************
Often, you have to fail as a writer before you write that bestselling novel or ground-breaking memoir. If you're failing as a writer - which it definitely feels like when you're struggling to write regularly or can't seem to earn a living as a freelance writer - maybe you need to take a long-term perspective.
I am not like Stephen King, who writes one book, then writes another. I finish a book and go off and... look for wrecks. Then, six months later, I might start another book.
I used to wish I would be a painter or a violinist, where maybe I wouldn't need to travel as much. Or maybe if I were a writer, I wouldn't need to travel as much. It's the travel that kind of killed me. And the hours. I always pictured if I were a painter you could make your own hours maybe... work after the kids were asleep.
I went to Los Angeles, because I have a manager, and - I can't remember when, but we met in London maybe six months or a year beforehand, and he said, "Listen, if you really want to get a job out of L.A., you really need to come." And I was like, "Well, can't I send a tape or something?" And he was like, "No, no, you need to come."
I'm a working writer; this is my job. So it matters to me that it's good. I sweat over every word. I don't just vomit this stuff up. It's agony. The only thing that comes close is childbirth, except it's like being in labor for eighteen months.
I feel like being an actor it is a great way to do your job and be a parent, because you have a lot of freedom. You have a job and then the job ends and than maybe you don't have another job for a while or maybe you chose not have another job for a while. For an actor, it's like maybe you don't see your kid for two weeks while you are filming but then you might have three months off where you are at home every day and picking him up from school. I find it's a great thing.
It's become fashionable these days to say that the writer writes because he is not whole, he has a wound, he writes to heal it, but who cares if the writer is not whole; of course the writer is not whole, or even particularly well.
In general, a writer would like to think that the best book that he has written is the book that he is writing, and the next book will be even better. Maybe if this is not true, it is very useful to keep the illusion alive.
Maybe one of the reasons that I don't ever experience myself as having writer's block is I don't feel that I need to be producing every minute of every day.
Gansey had no idea how old Blue was. He knew she'd just finished eleventh grade. Maybe she was sixteen. Maybe she was eighteen. Maybe she was twenty-two and just very short and remedial.
Writing a book is a long and difficult process for me. I'm a slow writer, so I spend the year with Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in my head. I was thinking about this the other day. I wrote the first book in 1987. Literally every day since that time, Elvis and Joe have been in my head. They're always there. I started these guys because I like them.
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