Daniel Jose Older Quotes & Sayings

I'm alive and capable of love, and love is a fucking river. It's never ending and it flows through us, all around us, keeps us alive and decadent, fierce from struggle and genuine in our vulnerability. I — Daniel Jose Older

But it was hard work making suggestions and not blatant declarations with her ever-changing Puerto Rican body. — Daniel Jose Older

An unexpected ripple has been torn in their meticulously cultivated ghetto paradise, and I'm the mothafuckin' pebble. — Daniel Jose Older

The reading room for suckas," Dr. Tennessee says. "The back stacks where all the good shit hiding. — Daniel Jose Older

And it sounds like two tectonic plates are getting it on somewhere beneath us — Daniel Jose Older

that true sheet-grabbing throb that emanated from the sweat-soaked room on the third floor. — Daniel Jose Older

A corpuscule's like an empty body with an angry-ass spirit shoved in it. Rude as fuck thing to do to someone if you ask me. — Daniel Jose Older

hipsters are basically yuppies with tighter pants and bigger glasses. — Daniel Jose Older

computer-majiggies, — Daniel Jose Older

The rain keeps starting and stopping like an anxious lover who doesn't know if he should spend the night. — Daniel Jose Older

When the Council's icy fingers slide the photo of Sasha's wry smile and sleepy eyes across the table, I will nod my head like I always do. Then I will find her. I will honor the dying wish of her brother, whom I murdered, and protect her from myself. And then I will ask her out. — Daniel Jose Older

I love Carlos like the weird, half-dead son I never particularly wanted — Daniel Jose Older

Where's Bennie?" Nydia said. Bennie was Sierra's best friend, and it wasn't like her to miss a practice. "She at some Super Saiyan dorkmeister overnight camp upstate for the week," Sierra said. "Learning how to make robots or computers or planets or something. — Daniel Jose Older

There's a jangle to the music of the dead. I mean that certain something that's so happy and so sad at the same time. The notes almost make a perfect harmony, but don't. Then they do but quickly crash into dissonance. They simmer in that sweet in-between rhythm section rattling along all the while. Chords collapse chaotically into one another and just when you think it's gonna spill into total nonsense, it stands back up and comes through sweet as a lullaby on your mami's lips. Songs that'll make people tap their feet and drink melancholically but not realize the twisting genius lurking within until generations later. — Daniel Jose Older

Cyrus floats away from the glowing entrada entrance; there's a swooshing sound like an invisible rocket just blew past and then a flood of old African souls comes surging forth. They pour out into the tunnel, thousands and thousands of them, and barrel through the COD goons without stopping. They're wearing head scarves and raggedy clothes, carved jewelry and beaded necklaces; a few even have chain links around their arms and legs. I feel the wind of hundreds of years of pent up rage and frustration release across my face. Riley's screaming as loud as he can beside me and we're both laughing hysterically and crying at the same time. Everything — Daniel Jose Older

Probably, all these words would tumble out, these stupid, useless words I've been carrying everywhere like a bouquet of delicate, beautiful, stupid, useless flowers. — Daniel Jose Older

You can't tiptoe toward justice. You can't walk up to the door all polite and knock once or twice, hoping someone's home. Justice is a door that, when closed, must be kicked in. — Daniel Jose Older

It's a whole other kind of sorcery - pulling the pieces of a shattered heart back together, and it's one I know nothing about. — Daniel Jose Older

Her voice carried the voices of a hundred thousand souls in it; a whole history of resistance and rage moved with her. — Daniel Jose Older

We are entwined. I drew power from the spirits and spirit workers and I returned it to them tenfold. The true source of shadowshaper magic is in that connection, community, Sierra. We are interdependent. — Daniel Jose Older

Even on the left, even in this age of exposed racial rifts, politicians still say with a straight face that this country was founded on principles of equality. Words mean things, we say again and again, but actions mean much more, and still as a nation, we worship the very slave owners who gave legal precedence to the notion of percentages of human beings. We scream equality and freedom while unabashedly modeling our action on the fathers of genocide. The only want to rationalize this most American of contradictions is to devalue the lives of the slaughtered, as was done then, so it must be now, and so apologists remind us that those were the times, and they didn't know better, and one and one. But if those lives matter now then they mattered then, and the clapback stretches through history, unraveling all the creation myths this country has always held most sacred, toppling our many false idols and cleaning out our profaned temples. — Daniel Jose Older

It's just a pretty song until the singer starts. Then something happens. I don't know shit about music, so I couldn't tell you if it's the key she's singing in, or the way her voice slides in between the notes like she's flirting with them, or just the simple truth of her sorrow, coming straight out of her mouth, but whatever it is, the song lays me down and eases all my blissfully aching muscles. It creeps inside my heart, circulates into my bloodstream. — Daniel Jose Older

It's really nice to meet you, sir. You drive like a wild maniac, and I respect that. — Daniel Jose Older

Octavia and Walter and Junot were speaking a language I'd heard all around me on the street but never read on the page, certainly not in the context of stories about aliens, detectives, or supernerds. This was a new mythology; it was permission. I'd always known I could get lost in a book; now I knew I could be found in one too. I — Daniel Jose Older

What the fuck is that?" one of the cops yells. "I'm the magic Negro from all your worst nightmares," Cyrus laughs. "Now scatter!" He swirls his arms like he's gonna shoot a fireball at them and they take off, tearing through the ranks of NYCOD agents and disappearing around the corner. "I like this dude," Riley whispers. Cyrus — Daniel Jose Older

That's the song for the herbs?" "Mm-hmm." "It makes them happy?" "It makes them work," the woman says. "Prayer puts the world to work. The action you take is your expression of intent. The world listens. And then works. Go — Daniel Jose Older

A scar isn't about the injury, it's about the healing. — Daniel Jose Older

Death always wins. Life is just a blip. It's a shiny, hyperactive blip, but a blip nonetheless, and no matter how strong or wily or rich a life may be, the slippery slope always leads to the great nothing. — Daniel Jose Older

I was thinking that we could spli - " "We're not splitting up," Bennie whispered hoarsely. — Daniel Jose Older

I thought on it and Cane can roll with us . . . . but he definitely gotta be a sidekick. . . . That's the rule, people. Sicka white dudes being all primary in shit. He can be the sidekick or the nosey neighbor. That's it. — Daniel Jose Older

The sky grows dark over the city as Janey tells me her story. Teh beast was supposed to help their community. Something that would look good in a brochure, I suppose. But instead, it cut loose, took out in to the Williamsburg night. Janey and the kids went after it , and when they finally caught up what does it do? The thing ate a hipster. — Daniel Jose Older

Juniper . . . pets . . . cupcakes. How can one even put those two things in the same . . . It doesn't matter. — Daniel Jose Older