But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

— Junot Díaz

Called her a whore and attacked her walls, tearing down her posters and throwing her books everywhere. I found out because some white girl ran up and said, Excuse me, but your stupid roommate is going insane, and I had to bolt upstairs and put him in a headlock.

— Junot Díaz

Deep down, where my boys don't know me, I'm an optimist.

— Junot Díaz

Don't panic. Say, Hey, no problem. 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

Dude, you don't want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.

— Junot Díaz

For Oscar, high school was the equivalent of a medieval spectacle, like being put in the stocks and forced to endure the peltings and outrages of a mob of deranged half-wits, an experience from which he supposed he should have emerged a better person, but that’s not really what happened—and if there were any lessons to be gleaned from the ordeal of those years he never quite figured out what they were. He walked into school every day like the fat lonely nerdy kid he was, and all he could think about was the day of his manumission, when he would at last be set free from its unending horror. Hey, Oscar, are there faggots on Mars?—Hey, Kazoo, catch this. The first time he heard the term moronic inferno he knows exactly where it was located and who were its inhabitants.

— Junot Díaz

He's really jealous, Yon said rather weakly. Just have him meet me, Oscar said. I make all boyfriends feel better about themselves.

— Junot Díaz

He whistles. Que viva Colombia. Hands you back the Book. You really should write the cheater's guide to love. You think? I do. It takes a while. You see the tall girl. You go to more doctors. Furthermore, you celebrate Lenny's Ph.D. defense. And then one June night you scribble the ex's name and: The half-life of love is forever. You bust out a couple more things. Then you put your head down. The next day you look at the new pages. For once, you don't want to burn them or give up writing forever. It's a start, you say to the room. That's about it. In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace—and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

— Junot Díaz

I certainly couldn't have survived my childhood without books. All that deprivation and pain--abuse, broken home, a runaway sister, a brother with cancer--the books allowed me to withstand. They sustained me. I read still, prolifically, with great passion, but never like I read in those days: in those days it was life or death.

— Junot Díaz

I figured this staying up meant something. Maybe it was loss or love or some other word that we say when it's too fucking late, but the boys weren't into melodrama. They heard that shit and said no. Especially the Old Man. Divorced at twenty, with two kids down in D.C., neither of which he sees anymore. He heard me and said, Listen. There are forty-four ways to get over this. He showed me his bitten-up hands.

— Junot Díaz