Salsa Nocturna Quotes

“A scar isn't about the injury, it's about the healing.”
― Daniel José Older, Salsa Nocturna: Stories

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna: Stories

“The rain keeps starting and stopping like an anxious lover who doesn’t know if he should spend the night.”
― Daniel José Older, Salsa Nocturna: Stories

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna

“I don't believe in spirit guides, but if I had one it just curled up and died. Nothing marginalizes marginalized people like a dead white guy talking sympathetically.”
― Daniel José Older, Salsa Nocturna

“If it had been totally quiet, no music, no smoking, nada? I think she would've been able to hear my heart sobbing.”
― Daniel José Older, Salsa Nocturna

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna

“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 each other, 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. That's the kind of music I make, and the dead do too. We make it together. *”
― Daniel José Older, Salsa Nocturna

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna: Stories

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna: Stories

“And it sounds like two tectonic plates are getting it on somewhere beneath us”
― Daniel José Older, Salsa Nocturna: Stories

“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 José Older, Salsa Nocturna: Stories