Junot Diaz Quotes About Character

Quotes about: Character

• 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. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.

  Junot Diaz

  Dream, Book, Writing

  "Questions for Junot Díaz". Interview with Meghan O'Rourke, www.slate.com. April 8, 2008.

• My thing is, I'm just way too harsh. It's an enormous impediment, and that's just the truth of it. It doesn't make me any better, make me any worse, it certainly isn't more valorous. I have a character defect, man.

  Junot Diaz

  Character, Men, Way

• There are a couple of strategies for writing about an absence or writing about a loss. One can create the person that was lost, develop the character of the fiancee. There's another strategy that one can employ, maybe riskier... Make the reader suffer the loss of the character in a more literal way.

  Junot Diaz

  Couple, Writing, Character

  "A long-term relationship". Interview with Elizabeth Taylor, www.chicagotribune.com. September 21, 2012.

• Character is the plot in many ways

  Junot Diaz

  Character, Plot, Way

• 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.

  Junot Diaz

  Character, Space, Mind

  Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. September 30, 2012.

• Usually at the end of each story we're thrown clear out of the story's world and then we're given a new world to enter. What's unique about a linked collection is that it can deliver both sets of narrative pleasures - the novel's long immersion into character-world and the story anthology's energetic (and mortal) brevity - the linked collection is unique in its ability to be both abrupt and longitudinal simultaneously.

  Junot Diaz

  Character, Unique, Long

  Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. September 30, 2012.

• When I was thinking about these women characters, no matter how bad a person I am - a bad writer, my limitations, my sexism, you know - the thought was, it would be useful as a writer to try to create a template for all the male writers, especially Dominican male writers, especially males of color, of how a writer can use seeing to create more nuanced representations of women.

  Junot Diaz

  Character, Thinking, Color

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. March 8, 2008.

• I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.

  Junot Diaz

  Heart, Character, Matter

  "This Week in Fiction: Junot Diaz" by Cressida Leyshon, www.newyorker.com. May 27, 2012.

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