“Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“I never wanted to be away from the family. Intuitively, I knew how easily distances could harden and become permanent.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“She had reason to doubt him; he was real good at planning but real bad at doing.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Crying all the time had made her more beautiful. Grief will do that sometimes. Not for me. Loretta had left months ago and I still looked like hell.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“You know how it is when you get back with somebody you’ve loved. It felt better than it ever was, better than it ever could be again”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Once someone gets a little escape velocity going, ain't no play in the world that will keep them from leaving.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“We’re all under the streetlamps, everyone’s the color of day-old piss. When I’m fifty, this is how I’ll remember my friends: tired and yellow and drunk.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“She smelled like herself, like the wind through a tree.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There's a lot out there.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“It would have broken my heart if it hadn't been so damn familiar. I guess I'd gotten numb to that sort of thing. I had heart-leather like walruses got blubber.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“I used to think those were the barrio rules, Latinos and blacks in, whites out —a place we down cats weren’t supposed to go. But love teaches you. Clears your head of any rules.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Anger has a way of returning.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“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.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“And the roaches. The roaches were so bold in his flat that turning on the lights did not startle them. They waved their three-inch antennas as if to say, Hey, puto, turn that shit off.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“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.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“They sounded a lot like me and my old girlfriend Loretta, but I swore to myself that I would stop thinking about her ass, even though every Cleopatra-looking Latina in the city made me stop and wish she would come back to me.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“on the plane he had been confident. He'd talked to the vieja near the aisle, telling her how excited he was. It is always good to return home, she said tremulously. I come back anytime I can, which isn't so much anymore. Things aren't good. Seeing the country he'd been born in, seeing his people in charge of everything, he was unprepared for it. The air whooshed out of his lungs. For nearly four years he'd not spoken his Spanish loudly in front of the Northamericans and now he was hearing it bellowed and flung from every mouth. His pores opened, dousing him as he hadn't been doused in years. An awful heat was on the city and the red dust dried out his throat and clogged his nose. The poverty- the unwashed children pointing sullenly at his new shoes, the familias slouching in hovels- was familiar and stifling.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Mami must have caught me studying her because she stopped what she was doing and gave me a smile, maybe her first one of the night. Suddenly I wanted to go over and hug her, for no other reason than I loved her.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Sure, I liked girls but I was always too terrified to speak to them unless we were arguing or I was calling them stupidos, which was one of my favorite words that year.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“. . . with the sun sliding out of the sky like spit off a wall . . .”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“We were on our way to the colmado for an errand.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“How much English do you know? None, Papi said after a moment. Eulalio shook his head. Papi met Eulalio last and liked him least.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Most people don't realize how sophisticated pool tables are. Yes, tables have bolts and staples on the rails but these suckers hold together mostly by gravity and by the precision of their construction. If you treat a good table right it will outlast you. Believe me. Cathedrals are built like that. There are Incan roads in the Andes that even today you couldn't work a knife between two of the cobblestones. The sewers that the Romans built in Bath were so good that they weren't replaced until the 1950's. That's the sort of thing that I can believe in.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“The skies will be magnificent. Pollutants have made Jersey sunsets one of the wonders of the world. Point it out. Touch her shoulder and say, That's nice, right?”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“What can you do? Tomás said. Life smacks everybody around.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
Junot Díaz
Born place: in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Born date December 31, 1968
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“Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.”
― Daniel H. Pink, quote from Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
“That's exactly where you're wrong! Any kind of person can murder. Purely circumstances and not a thing to do with temperament! People get so far -- and it takes just the least little thing to push them over the brink. Anybody. Even your grandmother. I know.”
― Patricia Highsmith, quote from Strangers on a Train
“Pain comes to all of us some time or another. Its how we learn to cope with it that determine our future.”
― Abbi Glines, quote from Until Friday Night
“Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches. Loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that loss brings to your daily life. You have to take the word "loser" and add it to your resume and walk around with it on your name tag as it hand-feeds you your own shit in dosages too large for even great beasts to swallow. The word "loser" follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from My Losing Season: A Memoir
“I am glad that though someone did me grossly wrong my final mark on this world is not one of countering hurt with more hurt but is one of love and friendship. We will always be known by our actions. Let them always be good ones.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from The Dream Hunter
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The PactBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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