Niels Joaquin

For better or worse, a lot of my writing as an adult is on Twitter. I’ll think of different ways to curate historical posts—there are almost 9000 of them—but here’s a simple pass at it.

1. Five most recent
2. 2025 highlights
3. Commonplace book
4. Favorite pictures
5. Closest I’ve ever come to going viral

Five most recent

Finished The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, and "Love Among the Haystacks" by D. H. Lawrence. "He had no future in the world: of that he was conscious. He had no future in this life. Even if he lived on, it would only be a kind of enduring." pic.twitter.com/M8jZgcT5P5

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) February 16, 2026

Finished The Rest Is Slander: Five Stories by Thomas Bernhard. My favorite one, "The Weatherproof Cape," repeats this nested "says Humer, writes Enderer" extensively—a clear influence on Sebald (who perfected it!). Indeed, it's great to feel the Kafka-Bernhard-Sebald lineage pic.twitter.com/L5WdiTMhnC

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) February 10, 2026

The Flower of My Secret (1995), in 35 mm. Still missing a ton of Almodóvar from 1980 to 1997. Anything I should prioritize (from any period)? pic.twitter.com/yyi1Q6tjLR

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) February 6, 2026

I should have known this because of data privacy laws, but I recently learned that it's actually very easy to export your full history of songs streamed on Spotify. (All-time Spotify Wrapped on demand!)

These are my top 50 most played songs over more than a decade pic.twitter.com/ROMRyx4Ahj

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) February 5, 2026

Finished Of Seven Fir Trees and the Snow: Early Stories by Thomas Bernhard

"the centuries are incessantly assaulting one another in every human being, but nobody can withstand this condition, these constant eruptions, these monumental conceptual detonations" pic.twitter.com/9drQkxGKST

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) February 1, 2026

2025 highlights

Marty Supreme (2025). Good Time to Uncut Gems to Marty Supreme is a legendary filmography in the making. As intense as those films (if you can imagine), with a complex role for Timmy, delusional and despicable, charming and scrappy. What a team (Khondji, Fisk!) across the board pic.twitter.com/78rivXaWuM

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) October 7, 2025

Commonplace book

I post a lot of quotes from books and movies as I stumble on them, so that they stay with me longer. Here are some of my favorites.

We want to give you vast and strange territories
Where flowering mystery offers itself to anyone who wishes to gather it
There are new fires there colors never seen before
A thousand unfathomable phantoms
To which reality must be given

—Apollinaire, "The Pretty Redhead" (🤗)

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) January 12, 2021

Woolf: "And so the writer ... suffers, especially in the creative years of youth, every form of distraction and discouragement." pic.twitter.com/8XIYGKzhpr

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) February 6, 2017

"Our friends—how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not." (Virginia Woolf, The Waves)

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) February 18, 2020

Ratatouille (2007), DCP, 2nd time. "The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends." I cried, @BradBirdA113

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) December 30, 2014

From "Marizibill" by Apollinaire, translated by Ron Padgett. "Je connais gens de toutes sortes / Ils n'égalent pas leurs destins" pic.twitter.com/AqBndRUufE

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) January 4, 2021

pic.twitter.com/oJus2DYtd9

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) April 22, 2017

Limelight (1952), on film. "That's all any of us are: amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else."

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) September 3, 2013

How Green Was My Valley (1941), on film. "I thought when I was a young man that I would conquer the world with truth."

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) May 27, 2013

"With the problem of the universe revolving in me ... how could I but lightly hold my obligations" (Moby-Dick)

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) August 9, 2013

Streaming: Mr. Thank You (1936) by Hiroshi Shimizu pic.twitter.com/mJhBxI8QKO

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) December 25, 2015

"Go now. Let me mourn my youth in peace." pic.twitter.com/4P8gFisZG0

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) October 31, 2015

DVD: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) pic.twitter.com/PshfhWu1BM

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) October 4, 2015

DVD: Night and Fog (1955). "Who among us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warn of the arrival of our new executioners?"

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) November 22, 2012

DeLillo anticipates big data and the Internet of things pic.twitter.com/DTJqYI6CoX

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) March 21, 2015

Orwell: after 30, many "abandon the sense of being individuals at all" and "are simply smothered under drudgery" pic.twitter.com/F60YOoJe5q

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) March 18, 2015

Streaming: A Hard Day's Night (1964). "I'm going parading before it's too late!" pic.twitter.com/j7DxYEkeB5

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) March 1, 2015

Pynchon: "What is most appealing about young folks ... [is] not the still photograph of finished character but the movie, the soul in flux."

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) March 1, 2014

Streaming: Metropolitan (1990). "This must be how the failure starts: an incompetence in mastering the common tasks of everyday life."

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) March 29, 2013

Streaming: The Last Days of Disco (1998). "What if 'thine own self' is not so good? What if it's pretty bad?"

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) October 28, 2013

DVD: Punch-Drunk Love (2002), second time. "I don't know if there is anything wrong because I don't know how other people are."

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) October 27, 2013

Before Midnight (2013). "This is the natural human state—always a little dissatisfied, perpetually discontented."

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) November 28, 2013

Don't be sad
Won't ever happen like this anymorehttps://t.co/f9nkiVdesW

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) February 23, 2023

Favorite pictures

Comparison of anamorphic 35 mm, 70 mm, and @IMAX 15-perf 70 mm at @MovingImageNYC pic.twitter.com/1uePpFvKCk

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) April 27, 2014

This guy ... So damn nice, I can't get over it. And his cinephilia and geekery and brilliance continue to inspire #PTAnderson pic.twitter.com/BQ3Fb0XuU1

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) August 7, 2017

Closest I’ve ever come to going viral

Somewhat embarrassed to say that I'm very fond of P.S. I Love You (Swank is one of our best, and her work here is heartbreaking) and Letters to Juliet (Seyfried, Redgrave, Gael, peevish British guy—what's not to love?) https://t.co/nzKKevt1ul

— Niels Joaquin (@nielsj_) July 18, 2018