Junot Diaz Quotes

Too afraid of plagiarising someone, so I stopped reading fiction in 1981.

I'm not sure there are too many people who write what I write.

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

I love taking on other people's words. They are much more interesting to me than my own.

Between last night and this morning, I've been getting a lot of messages from overseas fans along the lines of 'There's an American comic ripping off Bleach!' I'm not that good at English, but I looked at the site and it seems it's a comic by Nick Simmons, the son of Gene Simmons. To be honest, I'm more bothered by the fact that Gene Simmons' son is a comic artist than whether or not it's a rip-off.

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.

Genius does not need a special language; it uses newly whatever tongue it finds.

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

I've never understood why people said 'in your own words.' Who else's words would I use?

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

You can just start writing, but you're gonna go off on 10 or 12 starts and weird tangents, and yeah you'll have those pages to use later - to gift wrap some fish for your mother - but either way you're gonna have pages.

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination will be the greatest.

You will have written exceptionally well if, by skilful arrangement of your words, you have made an ordinary one seem original.

In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.

The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Write relentlessly, until you find your voice. Then, use it.

Sentence writers are not copyists; they are selectors.

So all my best is dressing old words new.

Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination.

Inevitably, almost everything we say is either quotation or paraphrase.