Quotes from Junot Diaz

Mami looked vaguely out of the snout of her parka

Homegirl was 'bout about it. Knew that when Gondolin falls you don't wait around for the balrogs to tap on your door. You make fucking moves. And make moves she did. Papers were assembled, palms were greased, and permissions secured.

Ask any of your elders and they will tell you: Trujillo might have been a dictator, but, he was a Dominican dictator, which is another way of saying he was the number-one bellaco in the country.

no se puede lamentar la vida que no se vivió

This is how you treat your mother? she cried. And if I could have I would have broken the entire length of my life across her face, but instead I screamed back, And this is how you treat your daughter?

It's disheartening, me and Magda together. We don't look like a couple. When she smiles niggers ask her for her hand in marriage. When I smile folks check their wallets.

La idea de Óscar de cómo se enamoraba a una jevita era hablarle de juegos de rol! ¿Qué locura es ésa? (Mi momento favorito fue un día en la guagua de la línea E cuando le dijo a una morena que estaba buenísima, ¡Si estuvieras en mi juego te daría dieciocho puntos de carisma!)

But this isn't human! When has this country ever been human, Abelard? You're the historian. You of all people should know that.

Creen que la gente odia a los gordos? Pues imagínense a un gordo que trata de adelgazar. Provocaba el balrog en cualquiera. Las muchachas más dulces del mundo le decían las cosas más horribles, las señoras mayores farfullaban, Eres repugnante, repugnante, e incluso Melvin, que nunca había demostrado ninguna tendencia anti Óscar, empezó a llamarlo Jabba the Hutt, solo porque le dio la gana. Era pura locura.

You don't know the hold our mothers have on us, even the ones that are never around— especially the ones that are never around.

I couldn't decide which was greater: the exhilaration of beating him at something physical for the first time in my life or the fear of the same.

Decir estudiante hoy en día no significa na, pero en una América Latina con los ánimos exaltados por la Caída de Arbenz, por el Apedreo de Nixon, por las Guerrillas de la Sierra Maestra, por las cínicas maniobras sin fin de los Yankee Pig Dogs —en una América Latina ya entrada año y medio en la Década de la Guerrilla— ser estudiante era algo, un agente de cambio, una secuencia de quantum vibrante en el universo serio newtoniano.

Nada más excitante (escribió) que salvarse a uno mismo con el simple acto de despertar.

What he used to feel for those girls he'd never really known was nothing compared to the amor he was carrying in his heart for Ana. It had the density of a dwarf-motherfucking-star and at times he was a hundred percent sure it would drive him mad. The only thing that came close was how he felt about books; only the combined love he had for everything he'd read and everything he hoped to write came even close.

Tenía un interés tal en la educación que cualquier conocimiento nuevo, por arcano o trivial que fuera, lo llevaba a la luna.

They only hit he you, he says, when they care.

And Indian Benny, a quiet, meticulous waiter who had the sad airs of a man long accustomed to the spectacular demolition of dreams.

No hay nadie más opresor que el que ha sido oprimido.

We all do shit like this, stuff that's no good for you. You do it and then there's no feeling positive about it afterwards.

And that's when I know it´s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.

Ana Obregón, unlike every other girl in his secret cosmology, he actually fell for as they were getting to know each other. Because her appearance in his life was sudden, because she'd come in under his radar, he didn't have time to raise his usual wall of nonsense or level some wild-ass expectations her way.

Sometimes I could grab her and pull her back on the couch, and we´d stay there a long time, me waiting for her to fall in love with me, her waiting for whatever, but other times she´d be serious.

Maybe it was loss or love or some other word hat we say when it's too fucking late.

Or our whole country, which you never think of until it's gone, which you never love until you're no longer there.