Junot Diaz Quotes

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

It is scary to write - period - for me, but once you get past the idea that it's scary to write, I still can only be who I am. As a writer, my job, to me, is to expose myself - to really sort of dig in and find out who I am and then put it on the page.

For me, when I'm writing something really personal, I don't feel good about it. It's weird that people can connect to it and like something that came from a really crap place. You have to be quite brave to write about something that you honestly feel and think.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

As artists, we have to be brave. If we aren't brave, we aren't artists.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

You have to be willing to be afraid if you're going to be an artist.

You have to be very brave in that first writing session.

If you're too scared to put your dreams, thoughts, desires, fantasies on paper and share them with the world, then being an author isn't the right career for you.

The hardest part is telling one's story. Once the story is on the page, the rest will come.

The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

I try to be a truthful artist and I try to show a level of courage. I enjoy that. I'm a messenger.

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

Maybe I could have been good as a drawer if I had done it as much as I did writing, but it's more scary to draw. It's more revealing. You can't disguise yourself in drawing.

It's getting too late in my life to care about the small things. It's getting too late to not be brave, to not live my life fully, to not try to be an artist. Trivial things like how nice your hotel room is, or if you have to be naked for a while, they fade away.

I have to live authentically at all times. And that's part of what makes me an artist. I'm not scared to do that.

Writing was my route to creative expression, and I needed to write about the things that interested me.

Art, it seems to me, doesn't need freedom so much as it needs courage and love - some would call it 'soul' or 'Eros.'

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

As far as writing, it's grown because I've really grown comfortable with who I am.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.