Junot Diaz Quotes

I think the family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on.

I think that it would be hard to find a family that didn't have a secret in it somewhere, and sometimes we know about them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we have an inkling that there's something hidden, but I think that it touches everybody's life.

My uncle was the town drunk - and we lived in Chicago.

I think if we taped a lot of families that claim to be relatively normal, you'd be surprised when you hear some of the things said.

My parents were very indiscrete.

There's actually 14 in our family, but we disowned the others.

There were always questions about my parents; I got so fed up with that.

I chose not to go home and struggle with the New York scene. My size sort of locked me out. I was too short for the stage. I would have been doing character roles, so I went to Los Angeles. There is a lot more happening out there. I also felt it was important to break away from my family.

It doesn't matter what kind of problems a family is having; it should always stay in the family.

I think family skeletons are best left where they are-- in the closet

Every family has that secret. Every family has that thing where you go, 'Shhh, shhh, shhh.'

There are two phone calls parents don't ever want to get from their children. No. 1 is, 'I'm in prison. Come fetch me.' And No. 2 is, 'I've written a novel... and it's set in your hometown.'

Families just have so many secrets and dysfunctions.

I can distinctly remember being the only boy in my class whose parents had separated.

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running.

Growing up, I did not have many friends with parents who were together.

My family, they are definitely not an ordinary family.

And now I was seeing that there was something really cool about that family. All of them. They were just...real. And who were we? There was something spinning wickedly out of control inside this house. It was like seeing inside the Baker's world had opened up windows into our own, and the view was not a pretty one. Where had all this stuff come from? And why hadn't I ever seen it before.

As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across premieval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.

I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.

I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkner novel. Who needs to talk about it? It's enough to live it.

Young people realize that something is amiss. There's a generation that fell in love with their phones, and it's very hard for them to see that there's a problem. But young people are desperate for the attention of their parents, who are really not paying attention to them.

Just talk about the issues that are impacting you and your friends.

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room

I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long. She edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph where I'm naked.