Good morning, #alamw18! Grab a seat for Junot Díaz. We'll be tweeting his talk in just a few minutes. 
"Books help us make a way when there is no way. Those of us who have been historically excluded from books... the pain of that is something that, as a society, we have not accounted for." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"Each of us has our library story. We wouldn't be here if we didn't." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"I hate to think what might have happened to me had my elementary school librarian not taken the time to give me a tour of our tiny library." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"The rest of the country was telling me that I didn't belong and nothing belonged to me, and here was this smiling librarian telling me this place of books was mine." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"A librarian gave me the gift of libraries and, to this day, I consider it one of the greatest gifts I've received. ... Libraries were the golden compass that kept my immigrant self from being completely lost." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"The harder the times were, the more library-rific I got." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"That's right. My ass cut school so that I could spent time at the library. Who in the world does that?" - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
Junot Díaz walked 4 miles to and from his library as a kid. "I know that this sounds like some crazy Depression-era tall-tale bullshit, but I am telling the truth." #alamw18
"In those days, I could read like an Olympic athlete, and reading was my event." Junot Díaz devoured doomsday lit. "Fortunately those were the Reagan years, and doomsday was everywhere." #alamw18
"Libraries are always under attack. Decades of underfunding and disinvestment and straight-up disrespect means less libraries and less librarians at a time when we need both." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"Libraries are the beating heart of a free democratic society." Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"In this phase of rampant anti-immigrant racism and populist demogogy, the public library has become the symbol of resistance." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"Librarians aren't perfect, not by a long shot. But I'd put my money on librarians over any of our politicians, any day of the week." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"I truly believe libraries will be central to our redemption." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"Y'all are doing an enormous amount of community and emotional and psychological labor. ... One cannot do any of this stuff alone. We need a team." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"Hypermasculinity is alive and well. Trying to figure out how to communicate to everyone that this is an actual acquired culture... that's always been a challenge." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"What you've described is how often the silence of parents are broken by the needs of their children to understand that silence." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
"People need to see the usage of resources. They need to see how welcome they are, dramatized." - Junot Díaz on encouraging people to find their identities in the library #alamw18
"I wish that libraries would finally have a reckoning and know that [staffs that are] 88% white means 5000% agony for people of color. ... It's agony no matter how liberal and enlightened you think. ... We have to decolonize [libraries]." - Junot Díaz, #alamw18
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