Quotes from Junot Diaz

She blew out of the Terrace sometime before Christmas to points unknown. The Gujarati guy told me when I ran into him at the Pathmark. He was still pissed because Pura had stiffed him almost two months' rent. Last time I ever rent to one of you people. Amen, I said.

Everyone warned her that the U.S. was a difficult place where even the Devil got his ass beat

Baby, you say, baby this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.

Don't panic. Say, Hey, no problem. Run a hand through your hair like the whiteboys do even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.

She watched hungrily for visitors from out of town, threw open her arms at the slightest hint of a wind and at night she struggled Jacob-like against the ocean pressing down on her.

But that was before she'd gotten that chest, before that slash of black hair had gone from something to pull on the bus to something to stroke in the dark.

You go to more doctors. You celebrate Arlenny's Ph.D. defense. And then one June night you scribble the ex's name and: The half life of love is forever.

Only a bitch of color comes to Harvard to get pregnant. White women don't do that. Asian women don't do that. Only fucking black and Latina women. Why go to all the trouble to get into Harvard just to get knocked up? You could have stayed on the block and done that shit.

You breathe nonstop, like a marathon runner, but it doesn't help.

Something must have happened, your mother speculated. In her mind a woman with no child could only be explained by vast untrammeled calamity. Maybe she just doesn't like children. Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.

You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda.

La Inca shook her head. She was looking at her favorite picture of his mother on her first day at private school, one of those typical serious DR shots. What always happens. Un maldito hombre.

He doesn't speak for a moment, as if the silence is the elastic that will bring his next words forward.

Those last months. No way of wrapping it pretty or pretending otherwise: Rafa was dying. By then it was only me and Mami taking care of him and we didn't know what the fuck to do, what the fuck to say. So we just said nothing. My mom wasn't the effusive type anyway, had one of those event-horizon personalities-shit just fell into her and you never really knew how she felt about it. She just seemed to take it, never gave anything off, not light, not heat.

Don't tell her that your moms knew right away what it was, that she recognized its smell from the year the United States invaded your island.

Something must have happened, your mother speculated. In her mind a woman with no child could only be explained by vast untrammeled calamity. Maybe she just doesn't like children. Nobody likes children, Yunior, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.

I am a hard man to replace.

In love! She wafted through her day like a woman with a concussion.

Nuestra relación no era el sol, la luna y las estrellas pero tampoco era una mierda.

She is an exceptionally beautiful girl. You think of that old saying Show me a beautiful girl and I'll show you someone who is tired of fucking her.

It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.

I might have no one in the world, but at least I'm free.

No matter what the fuck he pulled-and my brother pulled a lot of shit-she was always a hundred percent on his side, as only a Latin mom can be with her querido oldest hijo. If he'd come home one day an said, Hey, Ma, I exterminated half the planet, I´m sure she would have defended his ass: Well, hijo, we were overpopulated.

The next day at breakfast he asked his mother: Am I ugly? She sighed. Well, hijo, you certainly don't take after me. Dominican parents! You got to love them!