Junot Díaz Quotes

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

Magda was reading a book by a Trappist, in a better mood, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, fingering my useless map.

...what a surprise (we all know how tolerant the tolerant are)-...

You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture. That's what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma- she stooped to pick up her purse and your heart flew out of you.

They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú - generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World. No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed fukú on the world, and we've all been in the shit ever since.

My African roots made me what I am today. They’re the reason I’m from the Dominican Republic. They’re the reason I exist at all. To these roots I owe everything.

Don't panic. Say, Hey, no problem. Run a hand through your hair like the whiteboys do even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.

I figured this staying up meant something. Maybe it was loss or love or some other word that we say when it's too fucking late but the boys weren't into melodrama. They heard that shit and said no. Especially the Old Man. Divorced at twenty, with two kids down in D.C., neither of which he sees anymore. He heard me and said, Listen. There are forty-four ways to get over this. He showed me his bitten-up hands.