A Quote by Junot Diaz

Because I can't seem to escape it. It's a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey.

Junot Diaz

Quote Author

Junot Diaz
American - Writer
Born: December 31, 1968

For me, I'm a filmmaker because, above all, I'm an explorer. It's my way of exploring and investigating the problems, the questions, and the mysteries about what it means to be human that vex me most, that keep me up at night, and that, when I finally fall asleep, insinuate themselves into my dreams.

Joshua Oppenheimer

My feeling about growing up in New Jersey was, 'How come I'm not in New York?' That being said, I'm older and I have a better worldview now, and so I think I grew up in an incredibly privileged position. The town I grew up in is beautiful. I got a great education, and I'm very grateful for it.

Anne Hathaway

Well, let's put in this way, I grew up in West New York, New Jersey.

Jason Alexander

This is what I've dreamed about man. Putting this jersey on is a straight honor. Me being from Houston I'm giving it my heart and my everything because this is what I grew up watching and grew up wanting to be a part of. It's just an honor to play for this team.

Gerald Green

I grew up here in New York City and New Jersey, performing on Broadway shows, surrounded by some of my closest friends from the LGBT community. My father, a minister from New Jersey, shaped my view that love is love, that we are all equal.

Nick Jonas

New Jersey is very big. There are different areas of New Jersey. There is North New Jersey. There is like the center. There are a lot of actors from New Jersey that don't speak with a New Jersey accent.

Janet Montgomery

I think, questions about what it means to respect nature become very important because just as in human society, for example, part of what it is for me to live a good life as a human being in a human society is to have respect for others around me. Now, that respect, to some extent, can be thought of as being grounded in the rights and interest of others but it also has to do with the stance that I take in the world and what it is that provides meaning and significance in my own life and I think there are similar ideas of respect for nature that apply as well.

Dale Jamieson

I grew up in New Jersey, but my parents are from out west. They moved the family to New Jersey when my father, a sociologist by training, took a job in Newark running anti-poverty programs for the Episcopal Archdiocese.

Thomas Chatterton Williams

We now know, from the latest research about neurons, that we are hard-wired for empathy. We're hard-wired for cooperation. That is something about what we are as people - what it means to be a human being. And what Barack Obama was addressing was not just race or just the nature of politics. The great speeches address who we are as people, what it means to be a human being.

George Lakoff

Because I first made my name as a rapper claiming South Central L.A., people often assume I'm strictly a West Coast cat. But my family was actually from back East. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey.

Ice T

To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.

Brene Brown

I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey.

Junot Diaz

I wanted to answer big questions about humanity, about how it is that we understand about the world, how we can know as much as we do, why human nature is the way that it is. And it always seemed to me that you find answers to those questions by looking at children.

Alison Gopnik

I don't think there's one right way to do anything. There's no one best way to be a woman. There's no best way to be a mentor. I'm just trying to be me and be authentic and live my truth and be as inclusive and interested in other human beings as possible. I'm an actor by training, which means that I study human beings and human behavior. That's what I try to do and what I love to do.

Elizabeth Banks

I think 'The Sopranos' probably solidifies the misconception that people have about New Jersey to begin with. Because you're from Jersey, and everybody has an accent, you are perceived a certain way. I don't know if they are jealous or in awe or look down their nose at you, but that's the way life is. If you don't like it, change the channel.