David Levithan Quotes

Sweaty palms. check. shaky bones. check. the feeling that all oxygen in the air has been replaced by helium. yup. ~ David Levithan

But this is the real thing, the hug that let's you feel held. ~ David Levithan

My face seems too square and my eyes too big, like I'm perpetually surprised, but there's nothing wrong with me that I can fix. ~ David Levithan

Fuck, I loved her then. And 'then' is blurring into 'now'. I'm thinking 'why not?' I'm thinking 'we're still the same people. ~ David Levithan

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. ~ David Levithan

We have defied the day as it was set out for us. ~ David Levithan

I feel as much belief in her as I do in God- I find faith in human perseverance, even as the universe throws challenge after challenge our way. This might be one of the things I saw in Rhiannon, too- her desire to persevere. ~ David Levithan

Feeling someone else's anger is bad; being left alone is worse. ~ David Levithan

It was a mistake, you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you. ~ David Levithan

We all have the potential to commit the crime. We chose not to. Every single day, we chose not to. I am no different ~ David Levithan

All the quips in the world couldn't prevent Oscar Wilde from becoming a lovesick fool. ~ David Levithan

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

You can find sorrow in the arithmetic, and you can find a bittersweet hope. ~ David Levithan

But I guess the thing about fear is that it defies the laws of rationality. It creates its own laws instead. ~ David Levithan

Now that the day is almost done, the world of glass recedes, the butterfly threat diminishes. I imagine that we're both here in this bed, that my invisible body is nestled against hers. We are breathing at the same pace, our chests rising and falling in unison. We have no need to whisper, because at this distance, all we need is thought. Our eyes close at the same time. We feel the same sheets against us, the same night. Our breath slows together. We split into different versions of the same dreams. Sleep takes us at the exact same time. ~ David Levithan

Libidinous, adj.
I never understood why anyone would have sex on the floor. Until I was with you and I realized: you don't realize you're on the floor. ~ David Levithan

If you think about it hard enough, if you trace potential
reverberations long enough, every step can be a false step, any move can lead to an
unintended consequence.
Who am I ignoring that I shouldn't be ignoring? What am I not saying that I should be
saying? What won't I notice that she would absolutely notice? While I'm out in the
public hallways, what private languages am I not hearing? ~ David Levithan

Some days are like this. And the only way to get through them is to remember that they are only one day, and that every day ends. ~ David Levithan

He'll have to prove it to you. Every day, he'll have to prove he's worthy of
you. And if he doesn't, that's it. But I think he will. ~ David Levithan

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. ~ David Levithan

If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it. ~ David Levithan

Tony:...but you need something to do about Noah.

Paul: I know, I know. The only problem being that (a) he thinks I'm getting back with my ex-boyfriend, (b) he thinks I'll only hurt him, because (c) I've already hurt him and (d) someone else has already hurt him, which means that I'm hurting him even more. So (e) he doesn't trust me, and in all fairness, (g) every time I see him, I (h) want everything to be right again and I (i) want to kiss him madly. This means that (j) my feelings aren't going away anytime soon, but (k) his feelings don't look likely to budge, either. So either (l) I'm out of luck, (m) I'm out of hope, or (n) there's a way to make it up to him that I'm not thinking of. I could (o) beg, (p) plead, (q) grovel, or (r) give up. But, in order to do that, I would have to sacrifice my (s) pride, (t) reputation, and (u) self-respect, even though (v) I have very little of them left and (w) it probably wouldn't work anyway. As a result, I am (x) lost, (y) clue-free, and (z) wondering if you have any idea whatsoever what I should do. ~ David Levithan

He wasn't always like this. Nobody is ever always like this. ~ David Levithan

I am jealous of anyone who can make other people care so much. ~ David Levithan

When Dawn looked at Vic, she saw Vic exactly as he wanted to be seen. Whereas Vic's parents couldn't help seeing who he used to be, and so many friends and strangers couldn't help seeing who he didn't want to be anymore, Dawn only saw him. Call it a blur if you want, but Dawn didn't see a blur. She saw a very distinct, very clear person. ~ David Levithan

It's one of the secrets of strength: We're so much more likely to find it in the service of others than in service to ourselves. ~ David Levithan

I wasn't thinking of marriage, just commitment.
I wasn't thinking of forever, just reveling in now.
We don't know yet how long we're meant to be-
there are so many obstacles down the road.
But there is also possibility; the ring marks the realm of possibility. ~ David Levithan

Seriously, is this what the rest of my life is going to be? i don't think i signed up for this. ~ David Levithan

And now it's some other guy's hands that are thumbing their way over Joey's face and down Dee Dee's chin and - oh, fucking hell - dropping down between the A and the M, going right for the V under the H&M-meets-S&M miniskirt. ~ David Levithan

Kind of. Is missing something proof of how much you were into it in the first place? ~ David Levithan

I move my feet, turn away from her, try to pretend she's not there, which is the biggest fucking joke I've ever not laughed at. ~ David Levithan

If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable. ~ David Levithan

We have fallen through the surface and are deep in the trenches of need ~ David Levithan

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare. I hate your big dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme. I hate it, I hate the way you're always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. I hate it when you're not around, and the fact that you didn't call. But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. ~ David Levithan

I nod to the other will grayson, up onstage. he nods to me. we have something between us, him and me. but the truth? everybody has it. that's our curse and our blessing. that's our trial and our error and our it. the applause continues. i look up at tiny cooper. he may be heavy, but right now he floats. ~ David Levithan

I'm not talking what you preach
there is no practicing here.
I am talking living what you preach.
And to do that, you gotta preach what you live.
I know what I'm here for
And I know what the Lord is here for.
The gospel. I will live and die by the Gospel. ~ David Levithan

With that right person, you can have a late-night conversation at any time of the day. ~ David Levithan

In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. ~ David Levithan

In small letters, someone has written NEVER FORGET on one of the slats. I know it's supposed to be a pledge, but it feels like a curse. Don't we have to forget some of it? Don't we have to forget this feeling? If we don't, how will we live? ~ David Levithan

I have to rely on Laurie to know that I wish he had been with me the last time I was on the roof. I have to trust that he knows I'm glad that I stayed. ~ David Levithan

He says presents aren't important, but I think they are - not because of how much they cost, but for the opportunity they provide to say I understand you. ~ David Levithan

This, I think, is how people survive: Even when horrible things have been done to us, we can still find gratitude in one another. ~ David Levithan

I can tell from the glint in her eyes that she's at least an acquaintance of Dorothy. ~ David Levithan

Our lives were short, and we never would have wanted to have them be shorter. Sometimes perspective comes far too late. You cannot trust yourself. You think you can, but you can't. Not because you are selfish. You cannot live for anyone else's sake. As much as you may want to, you can't stay alive just because other people want you alive. You cannot stay alive for your parents. You cannot stay alive for your friends. And you have no responsibility to stay alive for them. You have no responsibility to anyone but yourself to live. ~ David Levithan

Kat: You can't just buy me a guitar every time you mess up, you know.
Pat: I know, but there's still drums, and a bass, and maybe even someday a tambourine. ~ David Levithan

You can give words, but you can't take them. And when words are given, that is when they are shared. We remember what that was like. Words so real they were almost tangible. There are conversations you remember, for certain. But more than that, there is the sensation of conversation. You will remember that, even when the precise words begin to blur. ~ David Levithan

You never get involved in the people's lives? The ones you're inhabiting?"
I shake my head.
"You try to leave the lives the way you found them."
"Yeah."
"But what about Justin? What made that so different?"
"You," I say. ~ David Levithan

I am so used to hints and mixed messages, saying things that might mean what they sort of sound like they mean. Games and contests, roles and rituals, talking in twelve languages at once so the true words won't be so obvious. I am not used to a plainspoken, honest truth. ~ David Levithan

We do not start as dust.
We do not end as dust.
We make more than dust.
That's all we ask of you.
Make more than dust ~ David Levithan

Even now, you refused to be pixelated, forgotten, silenced, erased. Not that I wanted to erase you. The opposite. I wanted the opposite. ~ David Levithan

We see each other, and it is enough.
For today. ~ David Levithan

Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs. ~ David Levithan

Isaac knows how stupid i find these things, and he finds them just as stupid as i do. like lol. now, if there's anything stupider than buddy lists, it's lol. if anyone ever uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it's not like anyone's laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person's tongue does. loll. loll. i can't think any more. loll. loll! ~ David Levithan

Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you're friends is easy. Being friends is not. ~ David Levithan

ou can tell a lot about a person based on the pages he or she journals on ~ David Levithan

I want love to conquer all. But love can't conquer anything. It can't do anything on it's own.
It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf. ~ David Levithan

There's truly a story on every corner. But still might be a shock, to realize you are just one story walking among millions ~ David Levithan

We were all actors, just as you are all actors now. But our audience wasn't as large as yours. And our performances, like those on a stage, were fleeting, uncaptured. ~ David Levithan

I suspected that when something was a beginning and an ending at the same time, that meant it could only exist in the present. ~ David Levithan

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

How genius to call them thumbnails, because what part of the body tells us less? ~ David Levithan

You know one me. Just like I know one you. But you can't know every me, Evan. And I can't know every you. ~ David Levithan

At one point they'd repeated everything enough, and I wanted to tell them to stop showing the planes hitting the tower. We didn't need to see it again. And yet I didn't turn it off. Because I was hanging on every minute, wanting to be there when whatever was going to happen next actually happened. ~ David Levithan

Love is tied to truth. I think of them as unhappily conjoined twins. ~ David Levithan

I know the odds are all against us and I know you feel this way too
So I know I would rather die trying to know if I could mean something to you ~ David Levithan

But no relationship should rely on you blocking out the world. The world will always get in. ~ David Levithan

Getting what you want is just as difficult as not getting what you want. Because then you have to figure out what to do with it instead of figuring out what to do without it. ~ David Levithan

Love weaves itself from hundreds of threads. ~ David Levithan

Rayanne: I think part of him is partly interested in you. Definitely. I mean, he's got other things on his mind.
Angela: But that's the part that's so unfair. I have nothing else on my mind. How comes I have to be the one sitting around analyzing him in like microscopic detail, and he gets to be the one with other things on his mind.
Rickie: That is deep. ~ David Levithan

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. ~ David Levithan

We are breathing at the same pace, our chests rising and falling in unison. We have no need to whisper, because at this distance, all we need is thought. ~ David Levithan

It's good to share a life - and it's good to share minutes and hours, too, Danny thinks. With a wife. With a husband. With a boyfriend, girlfriend, best friend. With a fling. With a brother. ~ David Levithan

The car can smile all it wants, but that doesn't mean you can see the driver's expression. ~ David Levithan

You said before that you were tired. Well, I'm tired, too. Tired of letting everything stay unsaid. We spend all our time together, and we do it because we want to, right? And I guess I think a lot about that, and about us. And about … well, more. Us having more. It's not about lust or sex or whatever you want to call it. I mean, some of it is that. But mostly it's about belonging. When I'm with you, I belong. It just naturally felt like that. And I think it felt like that for you. But I don't know where that leaves us, or even what that is. I'm just tired of trying to figure it out myself. I need the other half of the equation. ~ David Levithan

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. ~ David Levithan

I pressed my head into the pillow and I screamed.
Pure sound. No words. But it all came out as your name. ~ David Levithan

Two infinities: the one that stretches to the beginning but never touches-when you halve and halve and halve, infinitely-and then the one that spreads out into the endless, endless future, the endless, endless, distance.The set of infinities that is itself infinite. ~ David Levithan

traverse, v.

You started to cry, and I quickly said, "No -- I mean this part is over. We have to get to the next part."
And you said, "I'm not sure we can."
Without even having to think about it, I replied, "Of course we can."
"How can you be so sure?" you asked.
And I said, "I'm sure. Isn't that enough? ~ David Levithan

She said moments like this were like waking up in the middle of the night: You're scared, you're disoriented, and you're completely convinced you're right. But then you stay awake a little longer and you realize things aren't as fearful as they seem."
Excerpt From: David Levithan. "The Lover's Dictionary." iBooks. ~ David Levithan

Coagulate, v.: It is a dangerous thing, this thickening of affection; you want it to have weight, but not to be an immovable burden. ~ David Levithan

Amber nods. "I once went out with a witch. It didn't end well."
"What happened?"
"I didn't get along with her cat. ~ David Levithan

I find my greatest strengths in wanting ti be strong. I find my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave. ~ David Levithan

Because it is senior year I have begun to see things as potential absences. The things I love will become the things I'll miss. ~ David Levithan

Chaste with a chance of inveterate lust. ~ David Levithan

You ask me some questions
And I give you some answers
But nothing that would make you understand. ~ David Levithan

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

i want
him to
give up,

no.

no, i don't. ~ David Levithan

I'd always hated the word realistic. Or, more truthfully, I'd always hated the way people used the word realistic - as if it were a limitation, as if reality were something that conformed so severely to likelihood that surprising things could never, ever happen. From what I'd seen, reality was much more complicated than that. Sometimes it was remarkably predictable, but a lot of the time it didn't go the way anybody would expect. I didn't believe in using probabilities to rule out possibilities. ~ David Levithan

I wonder if it's possible to start a new relationship without hurting someone else. ~ David Levithan

Its a fine line between love and stalking. ~ David Levithan

There is no such thing as equality for some. Equality must be for all. That is what freedom is. That is what liberty is. No human being is born more or less important than any other. How can we allow ourselves to forget that? What simpler truth is there? ~ David Levithan

The pink-haired boy is scared, so incredibly scared - only the thing you've most wished for can scare you in that way. ~ David Levithan

He was attractive. I knew that. And I knew that attractive people always got away with things. ~ David Levithan

That would have been the worst kind of violation, to read you words uninvited. ~ David Levithan

This is no longer restlessness--it's recklessness. At first we're walking hand in hand. Then we're running hand in hand. That giddy rush of keeping up with one another, of zooming through the school, reducing everything that's not us into an inconsequential blur. We are laughing, we are playful. We leave her books in her locker and move out of the building, into the air, the real air, the sunshine and the trees and the less burdensome world. I am breaking the rules... ~ David Levithan

Healthy, adj.
There are times when I'm alone that I think, This is it. This is actually the natural state. All I need are my thoughts and my small acts of creation and my ability to go or do whatever I want to go or do. I am myself, and that is the point. Pairing is a social construction. It is by no means necessary for everyone to do it. Maybe I'm better like this. Maybe I could live my life in my own world, and then simply leave it when it's time to go. ~ David Levithan

I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You'd think we'd be getting better at it. But there's just more and more chaos. The pieces - they're everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it's right, but because it will mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe in that. ~ David Levithan

How amazing it is that friendships can become so full that you can't imagine what your life was like before them. ~ David Levithan

If I had been the same age. If I had gone to the same school. If I was in that room right now. There's no way to know if we would have lasted. There's no way to be sure, and plenty of reason to doubt it. I just wish I'd had the chance. That is one of the things I miss the most- the chance to make it work. ~ David Levithan

Brown, I say, deep brown. Like coffee without any milk. ~ David Levithan