“I’m not surprised that in a time of hideous precarity so many of us would find ourselves tempted by the false grandiosities of certainty. But we must not confuse certainty with safety — in fact, certainty is the end of the imagination and therefore the definition of unsafety. Nor should we confuse unknowing with ignorance. To unknow is to admit limits, to acknowledge that others might have answers you lack, to recognize our exquisite interdependence as people, and best of all to seek within. To dwell in unknowing is to put your phone away and be for a brief moment completely, imperfectly, human. In times like ours unknowing is excellent proof against our society’s inhumanity, against the lizard supremacy of certainty. There is wisdom in the question deferred, the question without an immediate answer. Tolerance and unity, too. And art, as well, if we can tolerate the fact that we are all forever a question without answers, a beautiful unknown, an infinite unknowing.” ArtHumanityKnowingDangerSafetyCertaintyImperfectionUnknowingPrecariousness Author:Junot Díaz
“But even if it turns out that reading books is on the downhill side permanently and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop that extinction, I find nothing wrong with fighting the good fight all the way to the bitter end. Nothing wrong with fighting for a dying arts without quarter or surrender. Sort of like fighting for a dying planet to the bitter end. To speak only of books, it’s not a fight that hurts anyone, and it is one I seem built for — to sing the song of reading never tires or demoralizes me, no matter how poorly the battle goes. My love of reading, I guess, holds me to the task. And my optimism born of the fact that I belong to a community that never should have survived enslavement, and if we survived against all odds — not only survived but prospered — what else might be possible in this rapidly tilting world?” ArtFightingReadingBooksOptimismPossibilities Author:Junot Díaz
“It’s important to remember that you and the work are now, right here — and there is, in fact, no promise of a future. Dealing in the now as opposed to some possible future where you have to defend the work on practical or economic grounds becomes another way to dodge what matters most — the work now. Futurity is weaponized against one’s own talents, against the only thing that makes the talent worth speaking of — what is before you now and not in some projected Muad’dib future.” WritingArtWorkFuturePresentFuturity Author:Junot Díaz
“It probably goes without saying that certainty is also the great enemy of art, and the deadly enemy of the artist. I suspect the artists that will speak to our moment (and survive it ) best will be ones with the lowest levels of certainty, who haven’t allowed the lure of social media to turn them into certainty pimps, who recall Milan Kundera’s observation that the novelist/artist teaches us to comprehend the world as a question, not an answer. As Kundera notes, “There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.” The artists who I’m most interested in these days are the ones who struggle always to be “heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.” ArtWisdomAnswersToleranceCertaintyQuestionsArtists Author:Junot Díaz