On the outside, Oscar simply looked tired, no taller, no fatter, only the skin under his eyes, pouched from years of quiet desperation, had changed. Inside, he was in a world of hurt. He saw black flashes before his eyes. He saw himself falling through the air. He knew what he was turning into. He was turning into the worst kind of human on the planet: an old bitter dork. Saw himself at the Game Room, picking through the miniatures for the rest of his life. He didn't want this future but he couldn't see how it could be avoided, couldn't figure his way out of it. Fukรบ.
Junot DiazI think that most of us are aware that as writers we are seeking absences, we're seeking silences, we're seeking spaces that people haven't entered. No writer is saying, "Hey, I want to go to this very well trod territory and say exactly what someone else has done." I think the nature of a writer, because we are attempting to bring to light areas that people haven't seen before, tends in some ways to be progressive, at least in that light.
Junot DiazSucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years.
Junot DiazWe're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.
Junot DiazA form wherein we can enjoy simultaneously what is best in both the novel and the short story form. My plan was to create a book that affords readers some of the novel's long-form pleasures but that also contains the short story's ability to capture what is so difficult about being human - the brevity of our moments, their cruel irrevocability.
Junot Diaz