Junot Diaz Quotes

I think there's a level of ignorance, when, in the callowness of youth, you imagine that you are inventing the world for the first time. You imagine that your parents don't know what it feels like to fall in love.

When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time, so adolescent stories are all beginnings. There are never any endings.

I love telling teen stories where the characters are experiencing things for the first time - the stakes feel really high.

Very intense first summer out, to be 18 years old and never having gone on a date, never having smoked a cigarette, never had a drink, even a sip of beer, never kissed a girl, all of those things. It made for a fairly intense first year out.

It is as well perhaps that this is not the first time I have been swept off my feet. In the days of my blessed youth there were such occasions; in what young person's life do they not occur?

A certain point came when I wanted to document growing-up adventures.

If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'

I must have been 15 or 16 when I left Antrim Grammar, but I do remember having my first proper kiss when I lived there.

When we grow up, we tend to forget our first crush, first love, as we move along. Only when you see something on TV or hear someone say something do you go back to those moments.

I love telling 'first' stories - first loves, first college experience, first kiss, all of those kinds of things.

I kissed my first girl when I was 13.

If you're lucky enough to fall in love, that's one thing. Otherwise all that was ever truly beautiful to me was boyhood. It's the meal we sup on for the rest of our lives. Love puts the icing on life. But if you don't find it...you must call on your childhood memories over and over till you do.

I will be able to look back on my teen years as spent on a television set just having the biggest bunch of fun.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

I love kids. I was a kid myself, once.

Sixteen is a hard time. A lot of kids are experimenting with things.

I still connect with original emotions. 'Night Moves' was written about 1961 or 1962 when I was in high school, and it was about what my friends and I did in that period.

People love teen movies because everyone can relate.

I find the subject of childhood fascinating. I explored this subject in Speak to me of love and I am curious about portraying the often painful transition into the adult world.

When everything happens to you when you're so young, you're very lucky, but by the same token, you're never going to have that same feeling again. The first time anything happens to you - your first love, your first success - the second one is never the same.

Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before - to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.

Although I sometimes enjoy writing from an adult's perspective, I feel dedicated to the coming of age story - that part of a young person's life where he must make a decision that will change his life forever. I still remember what it's like to be twelve years old.

When I read 'Stand By Me,' it was like, 'This is a look back at the same time period when I was growing up, and it was about kids, but it really felt like what it was like to have those powerful feelings of friendship at age 12.' That's what got to me.

I was 13 and at summer camp when I had my first kiss.

I was taken by the romanticism of being thought of as an adult and living in a world that was completely new to me. I fell in love with acting then.