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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Junot Díaz

I always had a sense that I would fall in love with Tokyo. In retrospect I guess it’s not that surprising. I was of the generation that had grown up in the ’80s when Japan was ascendant (born aloft by a bubble whose burst crippled its economy for decades), and I’d fed on a steady diet of anime and samurai films.

Love, Generation, Fall

People are always fascinated by infidelity because, in the end – whether we’ve had direct experience or not – there’s part of you that knows there’s absolutely no more piercing betrayal. People are undone by it.

End, People, You

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.’

Lucky, Think, New

Students teach all sorts of things but most importantly they make explicit the courage that it takes to be a learner, the courage it takes to open yourself to the transformative power of real learning and that courage I am exposed to almost every day at MIT and that I’m deeply grateful for.

Courage, Day, Power

I feel most like myself… after I run – I go out for five miles every morning.

Myself, Run, Feel

The Caribbean is such an apocalyptic place, whether it’s the decimation of the indigenous populations by the Europeans, whether it’s the importation of slaves and their subsequent being worked to death by the millions in many ways, whether it’s the immigrant processes which began for many people, new worlds ending their old ones.

Ending, People, Place

Colleagues are a wonderful thing – but mentors, that’s where the real work gets done.

Colleagues, Done, Mentors

My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn’t budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn’t been pretty damn cool.

Hope, Book, Past

If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you’re not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain’t different or original.

Think, You, Different

I’m still trying to figure out how to write about cancer and my family’s experience with it. If I had been able to write ‘The Pura Principle’ back in those days, I’m positive it would have had no humor in it. Which means the story would have been false.

Positive, Family, Experience

We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there’s an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves.

Unity, Dream, Voice

I was part of that group of kids growing up in the ’80s under the Reagan regime, what I used to call ‘living in the shadow of Dr. Manhattan,’ where we would have dreams all the time that New York City was being destroyed, and that that wall of light and destruction was rolling out and would just devour our neighborhood.

Time, Light, Shadow