Junot Diaz Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

  Junot Diaz

  Inspirational, Writing, Views

  "Becoming a Writer". www.oprah.com. November, 2009.

• You must learn her. You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. And, this is how you keep her.

  Junot Diaz

  Relationship, Giving Up, Writing

• In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Writing, Order

• 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.

• You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You quote Neruda. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. Because you know in your lying cheater’s heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

  Junot Diaz

  Lying, Book, Writing

• I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.

  Junot Diaz

  Real, Writing, Thinking

• I think there's something really painful about your identity being entirely composed of ghosts. For me, I didn't want to be this kid whose Dominicanness was something caught utterly in the past, is an abstraction, the thing that I write about. Instead I wanted it to be, first and foremost, a thing that I lived.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Kids, Thinking

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That's what I always find myself short on and what I have to struggle to achieve in order that the work might live.

  Junot Diaz

  Struggle, Writing, Order

• I think a lot of the most interesting immigrant writing involves stepping outside of that old, dreary binary. Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker is a great example. Same goes for Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Warrior, Thinking

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

• 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.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Mean, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Pieces, Resources

• I wring my hands because I know that as a dude, my privilege, my long-term deficiencies work against me in writing women, no matter how hard I try and how talented I am.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Hands, Long

• But it's clear to me that us slow-poke writers are a dying breed. It's amazing how thoroughly my young writing students have internalized the new machine rhythm, the rush many of my young writers are in to publish. The majority don't want to sit on a book for four, five years. The majority don't want to listen to the silence inside and outside for their artistic imprimatur. The majority want to publish fast, publish now.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Writing, Years

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

• I'm not writing fairy tales or object lessons.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Lessons, Fairy Tale

  "Junot Díaz's Pro-Woman Agenda" by Virginia Vitzthum, www.elle.com. September 18, 2012.

• I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.

  Junot Diaz

  Pain, Book, Writing

• I'm having so much trouble with writing. Maybe if I help other people, it'll be easier for me.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Helping Others, People

  "Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist Junot Diaz". Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. March 8, 2008.

• It took me sixteen years to write.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Years, Sixteen

• I write incredibly slowly. And, on top of that, I spent my entire youth and twenties working like a dog, so one of the things that happened when I finished Drown was that I got busy living. I'd never travelled, I'd never seen anything. So I did as much travelling as my job teaching would allow.

  Junot Diaz

  Dog, Jobs, Teaching

  "The return of the young master". Interview with Edward Marriott, www.theguardian.com. February 10, 2008.

• I've been trying to write. I also spent a lot of time on different campuses, in conversation, helping other writers. That's what I do: I teach them writing.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Helping Others, Trying

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

• 'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Example, Oscars

• 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.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Eight, Bed

• In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel.

  Junot Diaz

  War, Dirty, Writing

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

• Stereotypes, they're sensual, cultural weapons. That's the way that we attack people. At an artistic level, stereotypes are terrible writing.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, People, Sensual

• The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck. The baseline is it takes so long for you to work those atrophied muscles - for you to get on parity with what women's representations of men are.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Men, Long

• 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

  Mean, Writing, Addresses

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