Junot Diaz
Related Are you taking us to the beach?" - Dan Cahill JUDE WATSON It looks ancient," - Amy Cahill JUDE WATSON It SMELLS ancient," - Dan Cahill JUDE WATSON Palm trees were fanned by a warm, light breeze, and they rolled down their windows to smell the sea. JUDE WATSON TOM HOLLAND I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people ... MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX BRUNO MARS I didn't do 'Orange' because I knew it was good. I wanted to do this because it feels go... SAMIRA WILEY ROB THOMAS MR. T Let's head out to the ruins." - Dan Cahill ROLAND SMITH I think on 'ER,' my other long-running show, I had some ideas about what's going on. ... MING-NA WEN GENE WILDER ERIK LARSON CANDACE CAMERON BURE When I was a kid in school, and you asked me what I was gonna be, I mean, even as a little first gra... DICKEY BETTS When I did 'Don't Look Back,' I no longer had Time-Life looking over my shoulder, so I c... D. A. PENNEBAKER I think that the first film I saw in the theater was 'The AristoCats.' I was like, 'Oh m... JACKY IDO JAMES GUNN SARAH SNOOK When I wrote my stories in elementary school, I signed them all 'Karen E. Bender' with the s... KAREN BENDER And never - not in a single case - was the explanation, 'I was pressured to do this.' The ex... DAVID KAY When I was in the eighth grade, I wrote this huge long paper about how I had no idea what I was gonn... SHANTEL VANSANTEN With the 'Hazelwood High' trilogy, I wasn't sure I was writing a trilogy. I would just w... SHARON DRAPER I somehow sensed when I was a teenager that I wanted to do my own work. I was quite clear that I did... MEREDITH MONK JIMMY CARTER BOB SEGER MICHAEL FASSBENDER I wanted to do 'Oh Shenandoah' because that's the town I was born in - as a tribute to m... CHARLIE HADEN I think back to my time in children's television, back in the 1970s, and the amount of innovatio... SYLVESTER MCCOY I just wanted to make a record that wasn't escapism. Like, I didn't want to write another re... DAN DEACON EMILY PROCTER RYAN GOSLING I was supposed to be working on 'The Weekenders,' but I was blocked. I got this crazy idea t... MARY KAY ANDREWS JUNOT DIAZ 'Joker' was a violent, dark, and brutal book, so I wanted to do something a little less heav... LEE BERMEJO When I was on 'One Life to Live,' I always wanted to delve into my character, Layla, to find... TIKA SUMPTER When I brought 'Sex and the City' to HBO, I wanted to do something independent, where I coul... DARREN STAR MICHAEL HIRST WOODY HARRELSON When I was younger ,I used to want to be, like, a back-up dancer, and my mom was like, 'Well, yo... SUFE BRADSHAW I think I started doing covers when I was... what, like 9 or 10? I would always do the songs that I ... SABRINA CARPENTER I felt that the biological clock was some myth to keep me from doing what I wanted to do. And so I r... LILI TAYLOR For me, it was a lot of pressure to make another movie after 'Inglourious Basterds' because ... MELANIE LAURENT JACK CANFIELD When I went into film, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to do whatever I wanted t... LESLI LINKA GLATTER About f-f-ace!" she said to the horse, flailing with her boots. "Into the barn, please. It's time fo... PETER LERANGIS RICK RIORDAN I don't let myself 'surf' on the Web, or I would probably drown. AUBREY PLAZA Drugs, sex, booze, all the stuff that we wanted to do. The problem was that we didn't want to le... WAYNE KRAMER BOBBY ORR WHIT STILLMAN I pretty much always knew I wanted to be a writer. I was writing goofy stories when I was 7 or 8. Th... ELLEN POTTER I did my 'Hulk,' but it was not easy. If I do another Hulk film it will always be compared t... LOUIS LETERRIER DAVID TENNANT All I ever wanted to do was get a great job on a TV show. When I read 'Modern Family' and st... ERIC STONESTREET I had just left 'Saturday Night Live' when I came to 'The Daily Show,' and it just f... ROB RIGGLE FERGIE I just started to write because I was fed up of not seeing the stories that I wanted, so I was like ... NOEL CLARKE I didn't want to break with my family. I wasn't about to make waves. But I had this feeling ... CHARLES KIMBROUGH There was another Judy Garland movie on TV, and it wasn't 'The Wizard of Oz,' and I was ... KATE MICUCCI BILL PULLMAN I left Britain in the mid-1990s when TV was going down the cundy - another good Dundee word - becaus... CHARLIE COX I found out that there was this project called the 'Great Green Wall' where they wanted to p... MAGNUS LARSSON KEITH HARING KALPANA CHAWLA NEIL PEART BONNIE RAITT DON MCLEAN If you can believe it, Hollywood wanted to change my birthdate. I was born after Valentine's Day... CESAR ROMERO PARKER STEVENSON PETER HELLER Many years ago I was in another soap opera called The Newcomers which was on twice a week for three ... JEREMY BULLOCH BRIAN ENO I don't normally do shoots in bikinis - I'm just not that kind of girl. But for 'Maxim&#... KRYSTEN RITTER TYGA ADAM BEACH I was in 'Seussical,' and I was in a cage onstage in a purple yarn suit singing backup, and ... CASEY NICHOLAW BILL BURR I really wanted to make 'Everest' visceral, real. One thing that amazed me when I was scouti... BALTASAR KORMAKUR JANE SEYMOUR JOHN HAWKES Well, I've thought many times when my career was in the toilet, that I was going to have to seri... AARON ECKHART JIM DALE JOHN MAYER I vividly remember my first 'Superman' comic, which my granddad bought me when I was about 7... DAVE GIBBONS 'Dawson's Creek' was my introduction to the industry. It put some money in my pocket and... MICHAEL PITT It was one of those early mid-life crises, really. I started asking myself, 'What is it that I w... PETINA GAPPAH AMBER BENSON I had this idea that I wanted to do this mixture of visions of African American women and visions of... FAITH RINGGOLD I'll die before I'm 25, and when I do I'll have lived the way I wanted to. SID VICIOUS CHINUA ACHEBE SAMMY CAHN I coined this term 'freedom thru limitation' back in the '90s because I was sick of art ... BILLY CHILDISH CAMERON DALLAS ELLIOTT ERWITT 'Side A' was a project that I wanted to do, stuff that I produced completely, and it was jus... CHRISTINA GRIMMIE DYLAN MORAN DIANNA AGRON The Jug Band was exactly what I wanted to do, and it wasn't my idea. JOHN SEBASTIAN
More Junot Diaz
JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ JUNOT DIAZ And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end. JUNOT DíAZ You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote... JUNOT DíAZ If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you... JUNOT DíAZ There were a lot of these middle-aged single types in the neighborhood, shipwrecked by every kind of... JUNOT DíAZ But beautiful girl above all beautiful girls,' he wrote back, 'This is my home. JUNOT DíAZ Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they ... JUNOT DíAZ That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s noth... JUNOT DíAZ You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has ama... JUNOT DíAZ We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there ... JUNOT DíAZ Don't panic. Say, Hey, no problem. Run a hand through your hair like the whiteboys do even though th... JUNOT DíAZ It's never the changes we want that change everything. JUNOT DíAZ Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun... JUNOT DíAZ Responding to a moderator at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2008 (video), about the Spanish words in... JUNOT DíAZ Called her a whore and attacked her walls, tearing down her posters and throwing her books everywher... JUNOT DíAZ All fruits do not ripen in one season. LAURIE JUNOT The next day you look at the new pages. For once you don't want to burn them or give up writing fore... JUNOT DíAZ You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this... JUNOT DíAZ Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven—where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play w... JUNOT DíAZ Some of our hearts are more Gothic and take to haunting. JUNOT DíAZ But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only wa... JUNOT DíAZ A heart like mine, which never got any kind of affection growing up, is terrible above all things. JUNOT DíAZ For Oscar, high school was the equivalent of a medieval spectacle, like being put in the stocks and ... JUNOT DíAZ You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can. A smarty-pants, the... JUNOT DíAZ ...and when he thought about the way she laughed, as though she owned the air around her, his heart ... JUNOT DíAZ They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of ... JUNOT DíAZ She never would admit it, but she felt utterly exposed at El Redentor, all those pale eyes gnawing a... JUNOT DíAZ Love is the great test of the human. The human is tested by our ability to withstand love. Love is s... JUNOT DíAZ I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes. JUNOT DíAZ Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one. JUNOT DíAZ We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter w... JUNOT DíAZ You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a co... JUNOT DíAZ Don’t tell her that your moms knew right away what it was, that she recognized its smell from the ... JUNOT DíAZ In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to b... JUNOT DíAZ Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory; you won't see it often. JUNOT DíAZ I watched commercial ave. slide past and there in the distance were the lights of route 18. that was... JUNOT DíAZ He had secret loves all over town, the kind of curly-haired big-bodied girls who wouldn't have said ... JUNOT DíAZ The next day he woke up feeling like he'd been unshackled from his fat, like he'd been washed clean ... JUNOT DíAZ Sure, I liked girls but I was always too terrified to speak to them unless we were arguing or I was ... JUNOT DíAZ Poor Oscar. Without even realizing it he'd fallen into one of those Let's Be Friends Vortexes, the b... JUNOT DíAZ It's just a matter of willpower. The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it. JUNOT DíAZ You ask everybody you know: How long does it usually take to get over it?JUNOT DíAZ You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, ... JUNOT DíAZ I certainly couldn't have survived my childhood without books. All that deprivation and pain--abuse,... JUNOT DíAZ Read more than you write, live more than you read JUNOT DíAZ What is clear is that being a reader/fanboy (for lack of a better term) helped him get through the r... JUNOT DíAZ His adolescent nerdliness vaporizing any iota of a chance he had for young love. Everybody else goin... JUNOT DíAZ She had reason to doubt him; he was real good at planning but real bad at doing. JUNOT DíAZ It was like being at the bottom of an ocean, she said. There was no light and a whole ocean crushing... JUNOT DíAZ Alma is in a painting phase, and the people she paints are all the color of mold, look like they've ... JUNOT DíAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ I can never sit still. I wanna hurl myself into life. MADI DIAZ Hopefully, one day I won't have to be so caught up in all of that day-to-day, the Twitter and th... MADI DIAZ I love to perform at benefits and charity fundraisers. MADI DIAZ I use Shazam all the time. MADI DIAZ There isn't a single artist out there, I'm sure, who wouldn't take the most perfect reco... MADI DIAZ I was pretty lucky to get into Berklee at all. I never really had any theory or music-reading capabi... MADI DIAZ My parents were super supportive of my big dreams; I was pretty lucky. I guess I became a musician b... MADI DIAZ My dad was a musician who went to Berklee, and he made me learn piano when I was five. MADI DIAZ Both of my parents were super music lovers when I was growing up - they had a massive record and tap... MADI DIAZ It seems that for all of the artists signed to a major, there exists the same amount of artists that... MADI DIAZ When you're in a songwriting class, and you write a song, and you hand it in to a teacher to gra... MADI DIAZ My parents were big music fans, and my dad plays music, so I grew up with Madonna, Frank Zappa, the ... MADI DIAZ One of my favorite feelings is the sense I get from pouring over parts of my past before lighting th... MADI DIAZ I could never ever say enough about Matt Amato. He has an indescribable presence; this warm, loving,... MADI DIAZ It took five days to drive to Los Angeles by myself. I listened to Abbey Road for six hours at a tim... MADI DIAZ I'd say, for my freshman year in college, I was doing everything in my power to hide the fact th... MADI DIAZ When I moved to Nashville, I didn't really let myself sonically explore, but things naturally go... MADI DIAZ Coming to Nashville has been so motivating and inspirational. Just watching people live and breathe ... MADI DIAZ I've lost fights before where I'm landing more punches and I'm moving away from the guy.... NATE DIAZ I want to fight the best guy. I always want to fight the best guy. NATE DIAZ Whoever has lost a fight in the UFC and hasn't wanted to fight that guy the next day shouldn'... NATE DIAZ Me calling out Roy Jones is disrespectful. NATE DIAZ I win by submissions, knockouts. There's guys ranked above me, but no one's interested in se... NATE DIAZ I want to go against the best fighters. That's why I'm always calling out Georges St-Pierre.... NATE DIAZ There was a rumor I was walking around at 183 pounds. When I left my room to fight Conor McGregor, I... NATE DIAZ Money talks. I want the biggest fight. Whoever I've got to fight - the biggest show, biggest pay... NATE DIAZ If I had been thinking business since I was 21, I'd be a rich man right now. NATE DIAZ I can always do five, five-minute rounds, any day, even if I was drinking yesterday or doing whateve... NATE DIAZ People like to talk a lot about me, about how I have anxiety or social disorders. I'll admit to ... NATE DIAZ I'm not sure what the UFC's agenda is when it comes to me. It's their show, their press.... NATE DIAZ I need a vacation anyway. They fight me too much. I'm not going to be the one to back out of the... NATE DIAZ My parents moved around Stockton and Lodi. I had a lot of anxiety about jumping into another classro... NATE DIAZ I don't love to fight; I don't want to fight. NATE DIAZ I'm fighting hard; I'm training hard. I'm still walking over people and stepping over pe... NATE DIAZ If anybody's getting a shot, somebody's getting a shot against me because I'm the guy to... NATE DIAZ If you don't find time to meditate and get all that negative out, and if you don't have the ... NATE DIAZ People don't understand: I've had 37 fights, three to five fights every year, for 17 years. ... NATE DIAZ I don't come and fight for fun. I don't do that. I don't like to hurt people for fun. NATE DIAZ I walk around - people know who I am. I've got friends. I can make ends meet. I grew up around p... NATE DIAZ I'm scared of any fighter I've ever fought because they are some dangerous people to be deal... NATE DIAZ Once I turned pro, I was like,' OK, this is not fun and games now. This is me. I'm going to ... NATE DIAZ I always took a fight; I always took everybody. I fought everybody. NATE DIAZ I'm trying to stay focused on what I'm doing. I don't want a whole lot of things going o... NATE DIAZ It cost me a lot of money to have a vacation, basically. It's nice to step back and see there... NATE DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ What's odd is that nobody in my family is an artist. My cousins are, like, secretaries at law fi... MELONIE DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ When I was in Boston, I was doing a lot of Americana stuff - I fell in love with Ray LaMontagne, Pat... MADI DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ I was named Class Clown in the high school yearbook, so I was always turning to comedy and laughter ... GUILLERMO DIAZ Whenever something is engineered as complex, it is designed to keep you simple. RICHARD DIAZ I'm a loner. I like to be alone. I'm socially awkward. GUILLERMO DIAZ It's just kinda irritating to me that we're awarding people in mixed martial arts for trying... NATE DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ CAMERON DIAZ The best way to find anything is to look with an opened mind. RICHARD DIAZ The rules are tricky and you have to be careful so you don't have to start all over. You really have... CARMEN DIAZ We're hoping to start a new tradition. CARMEN DIAZ We're trying to keep the tradition alive. Many don't celebrate it anymore. CARMEN DIAZ We've participated in so many festivals and activities in the community. It shows we're a growing co... CARMEN DIAZ Look, I'm in the moment. CARLOS DIAZ
When I was in 'Billy,' I always knew that I wanted to do something in performing. I always k... 
Ever since I was a kid, this was all I wanted to do. I've wanted to do music. I wanted to sing. ... 
'Freaks and Geeks' was my favorite show when it was on, by a wide measure. And that's th... 
All I ever wanted to do with my life was own a little house. I did that way back with 'Rocky,... 
I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the direct... 
I was once again looking for a book idea, and I remembered Holmes, but I specifically remembered tha... 
The way I was raised, family was always the most important. When I had our first daughter, Natasha, ... 
When I got hired to do 'Guardians,' it was the dream of a lifetime for me. This is what I... 
I always wanted to do some sort of action film - even a superhero movie - and when 'Lucy' ca... 
I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming. 
Elvis came along when I was 10. My father gave me a bass ukulele. I taught myself how to play from a... 
When I was four, I just wanted to drive, I collected toy cars. Where does that sort of thing come fr... 
I feel like 'CSI: Miami' was just a license to do all sorts of horrible things that I'd ... 
When I was a kid, I was kind of obsessed with that movie 'Dick Tracy.' Burger King had all t... 
I write incredibly slowly. And, on top of that, I spent my entire youth and twenties working like a ... 
Of course I had written a film about Elizabeth I, and I loved the Tudor period, and I think at the t... 
When I was younger, I wanted to be a cop. Then I watched 'The Wild Wild West,' and so I want... 
When I realized I wanted to do more writing and less traveling around the world teaching live semina... 
You see?" Damien leaned over his desk and spread out half a dozen charcoal sketches. "These are only... 
I didn't want to do a book just to do a book. I wanted to do a book that, if you should read it,... 
The thing that was most harmful was that there was always something that was about to happen. So I f... 
I was very small, about 3 or 4 I think, and just wanted to be the people on telly telling these wond... 
I was in a group called Wild Orchid and it just wasn't working. I wasn't being myself. What ... 
With While You Were Sleeping, it was so much fun and such a Cinderella story, that I didn't want... 
I've always wanted to work for Walt Disney. That's what I thought I was going to do when I g... 
I don't know why I always liked aerospace engineering. I was in the 10th grade when I figured th... 
I've heard the stories. Like, Eric Clapton said he wanted to burn his guitar when he heard Jimi ... 
When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it - why would I try to match it? When I wro... 
I've never done anything but what I wanted to do with my life. I don't think too many people... 
I could be happy doing something like architecture. It would involve another couple of years of grad... 
I remember the cover of this one L'Amour book showed a guy on horseback, leading a pack horse ac... 
I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn't want it to be eternally repetitive, eit... 
I never wanted to be that fad type of artist. When I looked up to artists, watching TV, I wanted to ... 
When I initially started acting, all I wanted to do was to be in one movie. That's it. That was ... 
You know, it wasn't even that I'm a funny guy, I just loved stand-up comedy and I wanted to ... 
I just did a film in which I had to be a dancer and I was able to do all kinds of extraordinary thin... 
I went to a performance of 'The Crucible' at the Guthrie when I was a sophomore in high scho... 
When I was nine, we'd take a bus to the seaside. Coming back, we'd take turns entertaining, ... 
I knew what I wanted to do when I was 13 and I had to go through four years of high school to get ou... 
I wanted to create a heroine that was flawed. I wanted her to be a real person. She's selfish, s... 
I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just kn... 
I had no particular image of Chicago in mind when I wrote 'My Kind of Town.' All I wanted to... 
I'd previously done 'Expelled,' and that was more on the comedy side, so I really wanted... 
Everybody's got to do something... I'd been on my own since an early age and I thought I bet... 
I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass ... 
There was this project I really wanted before 'Glee' and I didn't get cast - I went in a... 
For me it's a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honouring and making for a ... 
Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done. 
I mean, I can get things done if I need to, but I can really be completely irresponsible and procras... 
I want to be a big, fleshy voluptuous woman with curves. I want a big bum, but I don't have one. 
I've been noticing gravity since I was very young.