Joel Derfner Quotes

#1. For the most part I felt nothing but scorn for an art form that required the pretense that it was natural for people to communicate with one another in rhymed song.

Joel Derfner

#2. At the time he seemed both ancient and French, but the wisdom that has come with age tells me he was thirty-two and faking the accent.

Joel Derfner

#3. But I could not bear to look into this man's eyes any longer and see such voracious need, because what if I realized that I was standing in front of a mirror?

Joel Derfner

#4. Everybody alive is a lost and disastrous mess ... the scattered moments of kinship we feel with others are, when reduced to their most basic elements, accidental discoveries of kinship with ourselves.

Joel Derfner

#5. I had never before seen somebody I admired understand what was expected of him, choose to act otherwise, and be happier for it. For the first time in my life I realized that it was possible to reinvent oneself.

Joel Derfner

#6. There are two differences between an orgy and a sex club. First, at a sex club it's considered bad form to introduce yourself to someone before you start putting parts of his body in your mouth. At an orgy you are allowed to offer your name as long as you do so with an obvious sense of irony.

Joel Derfner

#7. People aren't tidy creations to be stacked neatly in the Tupperware or poured in premeasured quantities from a box into the Cuisinart with no spills; everybody alive is a lost and disastrous mess.

Joel Derfner

#8. In intimate conversation I am as supportive and positive as the next man, but gatherings of happy people make me miserable. I long to share in the collective joy, but instead I am racked with anxiety.

Joel Derfner

#9. I love my life because a part of me has learned how to give up hope, and that, I suspect, is a dangerous lesson to unlearn.

Joel Derfner

#10. Did you just say you
Think Mansfield Park is boring?
Get out of my house.

Joel Derfner