American - Writer | December 31, 1968 -
It took me 11 years to struggle through one dumb book, and every day you just want to give up. But you don't find out you're an artist because you do something really well.
Junot Diaz
DayStruggleMeBookYouDumb
We get these lives for free. I didn't do anything to get this life, and no matter what the hardships are, it is free and, in a way, it's an extraordinary bargain.
LifeFreeHardshipsWayMatterGet
It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.
WorkDayDinnerWritingEvery Day
Spin is 'something is beautiful because we say it's beautiful.'
BeautifulSaySomethingBecauseSpin
I'm sure I'm one of those undiagnosed people with social anxiety.
PeopleAnxietySocialSureThose
Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and dance, what's the use of putting them down on paper.
DailyDanceWordsPoetryGrowing Up
Artists are not cheerleaders, and we're not the heads of tourism boards. We expose and discuss what is problematic, what is contradictory, what is hurtful and what is silenced in the culture we're in.
CultureTourismHurtfulArtists
Nobody warned me that when you fall in love, you really fall in love forever.
LoveMeYouFallNobodyForever
I find infidelity interesting because it's so revelatory about people. It's this really silent thing. Everyone acknowledges it as a general practice, but nobody likes to go beyond that, to get down to the nitty-gritty.
PracticePeopleInterestingDownGo
I'm an immigrant and I will stay an immigrant forever.
WillImmigrantForeverStay
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. But instead I happen to be, in the tree of life of writers, down at the bottom, with the hematodes.
LifeTreeMeFriendsYouDown
Infidelity raises profound questions about intimacy.
QuestionsIntimacyProfoundAbout
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Junot Diaz quotes