Daniel Nester > Quotes

“What keeps me going when I think of ex-friends is that we’re all really going through several lifetimes, often at the same time, all with different people; that we draw towards and push away from each other when we have to, like fucking quarks and particles, and sometimes that drawing and the pushing heals, and sometimes it just hurts.”
― Daniel Nester

“Most people look to music to validate their tastes, rather than simply react to what they hear.”
― Daniel Nester, Shader: 99 Notes on Car Washes, Making Out in Church, Grief, and Other Unlearnable Subjects

“There’s always a den mother in LSD groups, and in my experience it’s usually a Goth girl.”
― Daniel Nester, Shader: 99 Notes on Car Washes, Making Out in Church, Grief, and Other Unlearnable Subjects

“POSTTRAUMATIC SMALL-TALK DISORDER When people ask me what I do, I say, “Whatever comes to mind, as if you care. I think I’ll talk to someone else. So long.” A person ought to try to get along, which I would do, if I knew something else besides the same old crap to say: “I’m glad you ask. I care about feigned interest in my work. Mind reading is my job. Your mind, for instance, is a long reel of profanities for which I care as only sailors do: I want to say just those profanities myself. How else can anyone stay sane? How else, I mean, if we can’t call to mind endearments, or, say, obsequies. I long to hear your obsequies, while you do that slow limbo in your box. Take care.” I may not care for small talk, but what else can anybody do, when dimwits who don’t mind how long the other dimwits take to say their dim, interminable say, insist one should care. Fine, I care: they take too long! Let’s end all this! And something else: death takes too long. Death I mind enormously. I do. But what do you say, briefly? Have I lost my mind? Do you care? Nobody else to anyone matters long.”
― Daniel Nester, The Incredible Sestina Anthology