David Levithan Quotes

If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I am going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent. Would you prefer me to read from Daphne's Three Tender Months with Harold or Cindy and John's House of Everlasting Love? I guarantee, your sanity and your indie street cred won't last a chapter. And they are very, very short chapters."
Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.

We lost track of time because we felt like time had lost track of us.

There has to be a moment at the beginning where you wonder whether you're in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself.
If the moment doesn't pass, that's it - you're done.
And if the moment does pass, it never goes that far. It stands in the distance, ready for whenever you want it back. Sometimes it's even there when you thought you were searching for something else, like an escape route, or your lovers' face.

You make it a production. Slam doors. Knock things over. Scream. But I just leave. Even if I'm still standing there, I leave. I am refusing you. I am denying you. I am an adjective that is quickly turning into a noun.

Look, look, we tell each other. It's Tom!

He's Mr. Bellamy to his history students. But he's Tom to us. Tom! It's so good to see him. So wonderful to see him. Tom is one of us. Tom went through it all with us. Tom made it through. He was there in the hospital with so many of us, the archangel of St. Vincent's, our healthier version, prodding the doctors and calling over the nurses and holding our hands and holding the hands of our partners, our parents, our little sisters - anyone who had a hand to be held. He had to watch so many of us die, had to say goodbye so many times. Outside of our rooms he would get angry, upset, despairing. But when he was with us, it was like he was powered solely by an engine of grace. Even the people who loved us would hesitate at first to touch us - more from the shock of our diminishment, from the strangeness of how we were both gone and present, not who we were but still who we were. Tom became used to this. First because of Dennis, the way he stayed with Dennis until the very end. He could have left after that, after Dennis was gone. We wouldn't have blamed him. But he stayed. When his friends got sick, he was there. And for those of us he'd never know before - he was always a smile in the room, always a touch on the shoulder, a light flirtation that we needed. The y should have made him a nurse. They should have made him mayor. He lost years of his life to us, although that's not the story he'd tell. He would say he gained. And he

And at first i didn't really know jed was
although i was sure he knew that i was
but gradually we both knew
and we knew.

What's the big deal with France? How come everyone wants to go there? Let me tell you about France. Their music sucks. Their movies suck. Their berets suck. Their croissants are pretty good, but the place overall still sucks.My family went there once on the way to visit Dad's homeland family. EuroDisney. Need I say more?

I want to tell him more, too. I always want to tell him more, but now that I know he's listening- really listening- it means something different.

If only you knew, Comedy Boy. If only I could tell you.

There were so many other people in my life.
I had spent all of my time listening,
learning the longings we all have in common.
I never took the time to hear them in myself
and I heard them speaking to him.
The desire for desire, that hope
for hope, the possibility of everything
truly possible. I had so many friends,
so many nods and conversations,
so many things I'd always wanted
to say to someone.

This, I've discovered, is the best way to waste time, because it isn't really wasted
surrounded by friends, talking crap and sometimes talking for real, with snacks around and something on a screen.

People like to say being gay isn't like skin color, isn't anything physical. They tell us we always have the option of hiding.
But if that's true, why do they always find us?

Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one.

Things are not magical because they've been conjured for us by some outside force. They are magical because we create them.

You can't know what it is like for us now
you will always be one step behind.
Be thankful for that.
You can't know what it was like for us then
you will always be one step ahead.
Be thankful for that, too.

They certainly won't think she's been taken over by the devil. If anything, they're suspicious that the devil's taken a day off.

All of these men and boys with their computers, all of these men and boys with their phones. All after the druglike rush of doing something adventurous, doing something they consider to be on the edge of something else. All of these men and boys fragmenting themselves, hoping the fragments are pieced together on the other end. All of these men and boys trying out this new form of gratification. All of these men and boys still lonely when the rush is over, and the devices are off, and they are alone with themselves again.

Which is more stubborn, the love or the two arguing people caught within it?

You and I are walking in the snow. "Why are you walking backwards?" I ask. You point in the direction we came from. "So they'll think that's where I'm going." You point to where we're going. "And that's where I'm from.

People often say that when couples are married for a long time, they start to look alike. I don't believe that. But I do believe their sentences start to look alike.

Why do you want to put more smoke inside of you?

This is the nice note, I can't help thinking. But just like a sound, as soon as the note hits the air, it begins to fade.

It is not desire.
Instead it is something deeper. I don't want to be with him
constantly and forever. I want to be with him for the moment,
and I want the moments to go on forever.

When we're alone together, I'm the destination. When I'm here in her life at school, I'm the disruption.

Iv. who was it who invented size zero? who was it who promised that if you got to a certain point you would no longer be?

But I still has enough longing for that concept that I didn't want to dispel it completely. Meaning: I didn't want to tell Lily that I felt we'd all been duped by Plato and the idea of a soul mate. Just in case it turned out that she was mine.

He wishes that time was a matter of choice. That you could live your life controlling the metronome __ speed it up sometimes, but mostly slow it down.

Music is everywhere. It's in the air between us, waiting to be sung.

When it all come down to it, the thing that matters most in a relationship is principles [ ... ] We have the same idea what's right and what's wrong, and that's got us through any number of things. If you can have that with someone, then you're most of the way toward love. Not just lover-love. Any kind of love.

Deep down, you see, I long to be arcane, esoteric. I would love to confound people with their own language.

I still have that drawing. Whenever I look at it, it makes me happy. That's the moral of the story. That's it.

It's as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.

These things do not matter except that they matter to us.
We have given them meaning
In the same way we have given each other a meaning.

And just like that, the universe goes wrong. Just like that, all the enormity seems to shrink into a ball and float away from my reach. I feel it, and she doesn't. Or I feel it, and she won't.

You will always be my always.

There are all these moments you don't think you will survive. And then you survive.

Flagrant, adj. I would be standing right there, and you would walk out of the bathroom without putting the cap back on the toothpaste.

There's no way to release yourself from a memory. It ends when it wants to end, whether it's in a flash or long after you've begged it to stop.

My body would cry
from all it felt
and all it couldn't.

recant, v.

I want to take back at least half of the "I love you"s, because I didn't mean them as much as the other ones. I want to take back the book of artsy photos I gave you, because you didn't get it and said it was hipster trash. I want to take back what I said about you being an emotional zombie. I want to take back the time I called you "honey" in front of your sister and you looked like I had just shown her pictures of us having sex. I want to take back the wineglass I broke when I was mad, because it was a nice wineglass and the argument would have ended anyway. I want to take back the time we had sex in a rent-a-car, not because I feel bad about the people who got in the car after us, but because it was massively uncomfortable. I want to take back the trust I had while you were away in Austin. I want to take back the time I said you were a genius, because I was being sarcastic and I should have just said you'd hurt my feelings. I want to take back the secrets I told you so I can decide now whether to tell them to you again. I want to take back the piece of me that lies in you, to see if I truly miss it. I want to take back at least half the "I love you"s, because it feels safer that way.

Your life is inescapable. Unless you decide to escape it.

I worry
about you
and i tell him
don't
and he says
that's exactly
why

The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It's as much breath as touch, as much no as yes.

Not everything needs to be said at once. Sharing truth is not the kind of gift that comes in wrapping paper - ripped open once and, there, you're done. No, this is a gift that must be unfolded. It is enough to start the telling. It's enough to have the beginning and feel like it's a beginning.

All through their relationship, Harry was the one in charge, Harry was the one who gave them direction. This wasn't because Harry was smarter or even better at it than Craig was; it just meant more to him, to be in control. And Craig didn't really care, so he ceded it away. He liked not being responsible all the time.
Complacency. Craig realizes now that this was complacency. One of the reasons he liked the sound of Harry's voice was because it meant he didn't have to use his own. But eventually this strategy backfired. Eventually Harry realized what was happening, and didn't feel right about it. He wanted Craig to fight a little more, but by the time Craig started fighting for them to stay together, he had already lost.

C'mon, Paul," she says. "We all know love makes you do stupid things.

On 9/11, all the hatred and murder could not compare with the weight of love, of bravery, of caring. I have to believe that. I honestly believe that. I think we saw the way humanity works on that day, and while some of it was horrifying, so much of it was good.

The words just start to fall there. And I feel some satisfaction from that. I've never written just for myself. And I've never written for anyone else. I write for the release of it. For finding out what will be there when I am done.

I am proud that I defy your categories. I am proud that I don't fit easily into any box. I am proud of all the things I am and all the things i can be. Question yourself every time you think you only see one thing in me.

I'm glad you're not mad at me," she says. "I just want everything to be okay."
I nod. If there's one thing I've learned it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.

You never asked what my anthem was. But that's okay, because I still don't know what I'd answer.

I have no more idea now of who I am than I did before. But at least I know that. And I'm starting to figure out who I want to be.

Most babies come into the world crying or gasping or snotting.
Not Tiny Cooper.
He comes into the world singing.

There was nothing very cheerful about the cold, and yet there was an air of cheerfulness that the cleverest summer air and brightest summer sun couldn't have compared with. Everyone was in this together.

WHAT WAS JANE AUSTEN'S LAST FINISHED NOVEL?"
"Vaginas and Virginity."
"WHO IS THE LAST PERSON IAGO KILLS IN OTHELLO?"
"His manservant Retardio, for forgetting to change the Brita filter!"
"WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LITTLE MERMAID AT THE END OF CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S THE LITTLE MERMAID?"
"She turns into a fish and marries Nemo!"
"Fuck you!

Our moments are music, and sometimes – just sometimes – we can catch them and put them into some lasting form. If we didn't have music, I don't think we could ever be truly happy, and if we didn't have special moments, we would never find music.

The idea that two is the ideal, and that one is only good as half of two. You are not a half, and you should never treat someone else like a half.

I want you to spend the night," you said. And it was definitely your phrasing that ensured it. If you had said, "Let's have sex," or "Let's go to my place," or even "I really want you," I'm not sure we would have gone quite as far as we did. But I loved the notion that the night was mine to spend, and I immediately decided to spend it with you.

Let's go into the woods and take some pictures," you said. "I found this old camera."
"Let go!" you screamed. "Let go of me!"
"You have to let go," the counselor told me. "Let go of what you're holding inside."
I can touch the picture but it's not your face.
I can touch the screen but it's not your face.
Let go.

They'd been friends for a little while but they'd never talked about how they felt.

And just like that, I knew what I wanted. Something I had always wanted. But it was so unrealistic it hadn't even made it to my wish list.

You're becoming. You're in the process of becoming. You just don't know what yet.
That felt right. It felt okay to stop there, for now, as we walked through the future.

Sitting in that room, talking to Mr. Wright, I knew I had to get all of my identities in order. I realized how many identities I had, at a time when I really should have been focusing on having one.

Every single answer starts with the phrase 'I don't know.' But most of the time she does know, if I give her the time and the space in which to answer.

Dev's elbow hits my back and I press forward and she's right there and I'm reaching out and she's right there and right at that moment the amps amplify and the music takes on such a pulse that it becomes my heartbeat and her heartbeat and I know it and she knows it and this is the point where we could break apart and that would be it, totally it. But I look into her eyes and she looks into my eyes and we recognize it--the exitement of being here, the excitement of being now. And maybe I'm realizing what a part of it she is and maybe she's realizing what a part of it I am, because suddenly we're not crashing as much as we're combining. The chords swirling around us are becoming a tornado, tightening and tightening and tightening, and we are at the center of it, and we are at the center of each other. My wrist touches hers right at the point of our pulses, and I swear I can feel it. That thrum. We are moving to the music and at the same time we are a stillness. I am not losing myself in the barrage. I am finding her. And she is--yes, she is finding me.

I have spent years of my life sitting in my room, creating defenses of cynicism, darkness, and bleakness. Jed's friendship is the skeleton key to my fortress. He disarms me every time.

What do I know about love? Not much-that's the safe answer. Even when I think I have a grasp on it, something comes along to make me realize I don't know anything at all. It's just a concept to me. It's the thing that all the songs are written about, the thing that makes smart people act stupidly. If I can make love a concept, it makes me a better observer. And it also leaves a place inside of me hollow. Sometimes I can actually feel it. To reach down inside that part-I wonder how it would feel, to touch a void. That nameless empty.
This makes me seem lonely, which isn't really true. I have other parts of me - friendship, for one - which compensate for the void. I can't feel the nothingness except in those rare times when there's nothing else to feel.

She has been hanging on to the hope of him for so long that she doesn't realize there isn't anything left to hope for.

This Santa's beard was real, and so was his hair. He wasn't fucking around.

But we feel this connection all the time, don't we? Our bodies don't have to be touching to be connected to one another. Our heart races without contact. Our breath holds until the threat is gone.

Hubris, n.
Every time I call you mine, I feel like I'm forcing it, as if saying it can make it so. As if I'm reminding you, and reminding the universe: mine. As if that one word from me could have that kind of power.

Most of the time I manage to forget to be afraid. But sometimes I think, 'This could be is,' and I move forward anyway.

When I saw you today
I didn't know I'd been waiting for you until you were there. And then all of the waiitng rushed through me in a second. That's something ... but I don't know if it's certainty.

We often believe the truest measure of a relationship is the ability to lay ourselves bare. But there's something to be said for parading your plumage as well, finding truth as much in the silly as the severe.

You can't wander around and think the wandering will call them back.

I have never been given these words
in this way before. This small piece of
gospel, three parts hosanna, two parts
testimony, one part lamentation.

My eyes are open and I'm not seeing a thing because I am so lost inside.

A sound waiting to be a word.

Do you know when you cross against traffic? You look down the street and see a car coming, but you know you can get across before it gets to you. So even though there's a DON'T WALK sign, you cross anyway. And there's always a split second when you turn and see that car coming, and you know that if you don't continue moving, it will all be over. That's how I feel a lot of the time. I know I'll make it across. I always make it across. But the car is always there, and I always stop to watch it coming.

It was after sex, when there was still heat and mostly breathing, when there was still touch and mostly thought ... it was as if the whole world could be reduced to the sound of a single string being played, and the only thing this sound could make me think of was you.

Just because I don't think we'd be good together doesn't mean we have to be apart ...

I only have a day to give - so why can't it be a good
one? Why can't it be a shared one? Why can't I take the music of the moment and see
how long it can last?

We come to a corner where there are a few people protesting the festivities. I don't understand this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired.
In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don't understand why it's so hard, when it's so obvious.

I am in control of the body, and as long as I am in control of the body, I will not allow it to hurt itself.

Exemplar, n.
It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.
You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath.

If you wanted to reassemble Elijah's afternoon, you could probably do it by stringing together all the photographs and all of the frames of videotape that he walks into. Always a passerby, he is immortalized and unknown.

For the first time in my life as a flirt - as something more than just a girl - I found the words. They didn't simply appear. I reasoned them out. I spoke them. Because they were true, and I didn't need anything more than that. "She doesn't deserve you," I said, and before he could dispute it, I continued. "She takes and takes and takes, but she doesn't take the right things. And she doesn't give the right things back. You're going away now. You don't need her. You probably never needed her. She's going to make it hell for you, but it's over. You know that. Free yourself."
He looked at me like I was some kind of oracle. In the best of all worlds, it would've been a look of love, an understanding that I was the one, I was it. But it wasn't that. Instead it was something almost as sweet - that mix of recognition and appreciation. That gift of worth.

The phrase rush to judgement is a silly one. When it comes to judgement, most of us don't have have to rush. We don't have to even leave the couch. Our judgement is easy to reach for.

The past and the future are what's complicated. It's the present that's simple. And the simplicity is the sensation of it being just her and me.

I think that this might be the easiest way to live - just concentrate On the small things, and never let your mind wander on big things,

There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with.

Bad Girl!" She chided.
"I'm pretty sure Boris is a boy," I said.
"Oh, I know," Mrs. Basil E. assured me. "I just like to keep him confused," Then she and Boris headed off with my future.

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I don't even know what I'm looking for, although I hope I'll know it if I find it along the way. Sometimes I want to simplify my life into a simple bare thing. And other times I want to complicate it so thoroughly that everything I touch will become bound in some way to me. I've become quite aware of my contradictions, but there's no true resolution in that.

Awhile, adv.
I love the vagueness of words that involve time. 'It took him awhile to come back'
it could be a matter of minutes or hours, days or years.
It is easy for me to say it took me awhile to know. That is about as accurate as I can get. There were sneak previews of knowing, for sure. Instance that made me feel, oh, this could be right, But the moment I shifted from a hope that needed to be proven to a certainty that would be continually challenged? There's no pinpointing that.
Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it happened while I was asleep. Most likely, there's no signal event. There's just the steady accumulation of 'awhile'.

You don't need to know how. You just make up your mind and it happens.

You'd think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it's painful.

You expect death to bring some new form of punctuation, but there it is: one small gasp. Period.

I've always known I was gay, but it wasn't confirmed until I was in kindergarten.
It was my teacher who said so. It was right there on my kindergarten report card: PAUL IS DEFINITELY GAY AND HAS VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF.

Gone is not forgotten, but our lives cannot be a memorial. This city cannot be a memorial. This city has to be a city. Our lives have to be our lives.

That's not what it means," you told me.
"And anyway don't you feel naked now?"
You fell quiet, gestured for me to listen.
The sound of the woods, the feel of the air ... The sky, so present.
And you, watching me take it all in.
Naked to the world, the world naked to us.