“My thing is every generation of Americans has to answer what we call t...” — Junot Diaz Quote

“My thing is every generation of Americans has to answer what we call the 'Superman Question.' Superman comes, lands in America. He's illegal. He's one of these kids. He's wrapped up in a red bullfighter's cape. And you've got to decide what we're gonna do with Superman.”

“My mother took care of us until my father scrammed, and then she ended up working in the small-factory sector of New Jersey with a lot of other immigrants.”

“It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.”

“If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original.”

“Let me tell you, if I could write one-tenth as fast as some of my friends, I'd be made. I'd be it. But instead I happen to be, in the tree of life of writers, down at the bottom, with the hematodes.”

“I don't need anyone creatively to tell me how I'm supposed to be. Only I know the answer to that. Only I know what I would say. That's always been my outlook. I haven't really worried about rubbing people wrong because I only know how to be Bray. And Bray is always going to be Bray.”

“Prioritization sounds like such a simple thing, but true prioritization starts with a very difficult question to answer, especially at a company with a portfolio approach: If you could only do one thing, what would it be? And you can't rationalize the answer, and you can't attach the one thing to some other things. It's just the one thing.”

“Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.”

“You know, the fact is that if we haven't got democracy, we have dictatorship. That is never the answer.”

“I don't know that I can give a definitive answer to that, I can only say that if we create the right climate those who are producing those products will have the opportunity to move into a higher value product if changes are needed if we get this right.”