Junot Diaz Quotes

The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable.

Artists are not cheerleaders, and we're not the heads of tourism boards. We expose and discuss what is problematic, what is contradictory, what is hurtful and what is silenced in the culture we're in.

What is art? Art talks about life; it's subversive.

I think the job of artists is to stir things up.

Artists have been very good at working for the church and for the state; communicating the aspirations of a society.

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Art has always been this--pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric--whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear.

I think it's a very important function of art to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest groups.

Everything I've done hasn't worked out - you know, some things aren't as great as others - but I'm having so much fun, who cares? Isn't that what an artist is supposed to do? We're trying to change the world. Otherwise, why be an artist? You want to shake people up and make 'em think.

Anything can be misinterpreted. People can look at Christ on a cross and think, This is an image of murder, this is violent, this has sexual imagery in it. And it just - I think it's my job as an artist to be out there pushing people's buttons and making them question everything.

Art respects the masses, by standing up to them for what they could be, rather than conforming to them in their degraded state.

My drawings and paintings were done as an act of protest; I was trying by means of my work to convince the world that it is ugly, sick and hypocritical.

I think the music reflects the state that the society is in. It doesn't suggest the state. I think the poets and musicians and artists are of the age - not only do they lead the age on, but they also reflect that age. [...] Like The Beatles. We came out of Liverpool and we reflected our background and we reflected our thoughts in what we sang, and that's all people are doing.

Artists are the gate keepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.

It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.

People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up.

Art has an obligation to offend

what society requires from art ... is that it function as an early warning system.

Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils

That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

I did go through a Goth thing, but that was a long time ago. I just like artists that shake it up, that piss people off or make people think or rattle the cage somehow.

Certain artists have a role to echo the echoes of the people and that's what I'll be doing on my next album.

It is an artist's duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.

Artists have to show us what is not going well within the person and within the society, not try to cover it up.

I'm not a writer, but today I think you have to be everything. As an artist you have an obligation to let people know what is on your mind and why you're doing this.