She'd never been big on church before, but as soon as we landed on cancer planet she went so over-the-top Jesucristo that I think she would have nailed herself to a cross if she'd had one handy.

— Junot Díaz

She was one of those golden mulatto that French-speaking Caribbeans call cabinet, that my boys call chicas de or; she had snarled, apocalyptic hair, copper eyes, and was one white skinned relative away from Java.

— Junot Díaz

She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life.

— Junot Díaz

She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.

— Junot Díaz

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, Junior, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.

— Junot Díaz

Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.

— Junot Díaz

Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years.

— Junot Díaz

Sure, I liked girls, but I was always too terrified to speak to them unless we were arguing, or I was calling them stupids, which was one of my favorite words that year.

— Junot Díaz

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

That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough.

— Junot Díaz