Leavitt Quotes

Assume makes an ass out of you and me - p.239 ~ David Leavitt

I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy! ~ Caroline Leavitt

Me: Now I understand why a guy can give up his freedom and shackle himself to one girl and spend the rest of his life working at a job he hates just to support the girl's offspring and then he dies, the end.

Susie: Yeah, and now I understand why a girl can give up her freedom and shackle herself to one guy and ruin her body giving birth to the guy's offspring and put her career on hold and not realize her dreams of travel so she can cook and clean and raise the offspring of the guy and then she dies, the end. ~ Martine Leavitt

I cried to my mother that I wanted to go to Hebrew school; I wanted Jewish friends. But when my mother took me, the kids there all knew each other, and somehow I was even more of an outcast. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I am an indifferent cook, but I can make pie. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Susie: Okay, Calvin. But you know what? You can't say, youcan'texpectanythingfrommeI'mbroken! And turn around the next minute and say, ohwoeismeeverybodytreatsmelikeI'mbroken! Which one is it? I can treat you the way I really feel, or I can treat you careful.
Me: Real. Just be real. ~ Martine Leavitt

There are some who come willingly," I said, as if I had not heard him, "not out of love, but out of sickness and sadness and a lack of understanding. He wanted none of them. And so he waited without waiting, and dreamed of what he could not imagine, and performed his terrible work and lived only in the moments out of which eternity is spun, knowing it was hopeless. ~ Martine Leavitt

Life if freer once you are out of the cocoon. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

These are the best reasons to do anything in life. People who say things like this are the kind of people who change the world. Who prevent the world from ending. Or at least they can change the inner world of a reader and that is a sacred power. ~ Martine Leavitt

We're all messed up," I said. "I think life is just about finding the right people to be messed up with. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

You could reach for him, and sometimes you would grab hold of him. But sometimes all you would grab hold of was a reflection of a reflection in a revolving door. ~ David Leavitt

Real people have a way of banging against the doors you've closed; they know your name, your phone number. They live with you. ~ David Leavitt

Reality is just this game people play together, something their brain decides on, and the minute their brain gets iffy about reality, they realize everything they know about the world is just their own made-up version of it, and that would mean everyone is walking around in their own made-up world, all alone, and reality is just something we invent together to make us feel not so alone. It scares people when some of us check out of the game. ~ Martine Leavitt

Remember that you don't have to forget what happened, but you can forget the pain. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Papa loves you with a dying and infernal love," the youngest girl said.
"Undying," the eldest girl corrected. "And eternal. ~ Martine Leavitt

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry. ~ Caroline Leavitt

We stood in the wings together, side by side. Reed's mouth was still agape.
"It makes sense when you think about it," I mused. "You get two people together who have you-know-what, and sparks are going to fly."
Reed's cue was about to start. He pointed at me and said, "Tonight. There's a party. And we're going to talk."
"Yes"
"Because this is crazy."
"Totally."
"Okay. Well." He tugged a strand of my hair. "Good luck out there."
"You're not supposed to say that."
"Fine. How about..." He squinted at me. "Here's looking at you kid."
The smile melted off my face. "What did you say?"
"It's a line. From a movie." He shrugged and burst onto the stage with a hee-haw.
It was a line. From Casablanca. The same line KARL had said to me when I was Elsa. The same like Karl didn't recognize when I said it to him as Floressa. Which meant... nothing. Right? Lots of people know that line. Just because Reed said it, and Reed was a sub, it didn't mean he was... he was...
"You're on," the stage manager whispered.
I stumbled onto the stage. The lights were too bright. The theater was packed. Reed gave me a quick, crooked smile, and I knew.
My crush on Karl was less complicated than I thought, because it wasn't Karl I'd been with that day in the garden.
Now my crush on Reed... ?
THAT was a scandal all on its own. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Writing is really hard, and it's really a skill. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: 'What's going on? Why aren't people responding?' ~ Caroline Leavitt

And so he did his endless work,' I continued quietly, 'without feeling, without pity, without rest, for to open his heart to these would be to open his heart to his loneliness and longing and that was beyond bearing. ~ Martine Leavitt

People don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul - satisfying emotion than a dozen facts. ~ Robert Keith Leavitt

Kylee laughed. "Nothing with you is normal. But speaking of abnormal, I saw this movie where these two girls liked the same boy, and one girl was a werewolf, and the other was a dragon, although she didn't know it yet, and it turned out the boy was a killer of, like, magical creatures, so both girls died and he took the head cheerleader to prom."
"That sounds like a stupid movie," I said.
"It actually was. But the boy had this shirt off a lot. I guess hunting magical creatures is great for stomach muscles. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

A bead of cold sweat dangled on my fingertip before dripping onto the doorbell. What if I got electrocuted from my wet fingers? I would die literally inches from my first high school party. And everyone would be like, oh, poor thing was so nervous, what a tragedy. Death by sweat. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

What? I didn't say that boy-stealing is a bad thing. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

I call Algonquin Books 'the gods and goddesses of publishing.' Not only did they give me a career, they care deeply about every writer in their flock. ~ Caroline Leavitt

He [Wallace] sent a quick note to his friend [Franzen] explaining his behavior. "the bold fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,"[ ... ] "all I can tell you is that I may have been that [a worthy opponent] for you a couple/ three years ago, and maybe 16 months or tow or 5 or 10 years hence, but right now I am a pathetic and very confused man, a failed writer at 28, who is so jealous, so sickly searing envious of you and Vollmann and Mark Leyner and even David Fuckward Leavitt and any young man who is right now producing pages with which he can live and even approving them off some base-clause of conviction about the entrprise's meaning and end that I consider suicide a reasonable- if not at this point a desirable- option with respect to the whole wretched problem. ~ D.T. Max

We all spend so much time worrying about the future that the present moment slips right out of our hands. And so all we have left is retrospection and anticipation, retrospection and anticipation. In which case what's left to recall but past anticipation? What's left to anticipate but future retrospection? ~ David Leavitt

I let out a sigh, hoping it releases some of the bad karma I just incurred from being so heinous. (Sean Griswold's Head) ~ Lindsey Leavitt

When a flawlessly dressed woman steps out of an iridescent bubble and wants to know, like NOW if you'd like to become a substitute princess, do you:
a) run
b) faint
c) say yes! ~ Lindsey Leavitt

By the time I was 5, I was already an outcast. It was the early 1960s, and I was part of the only Jewish family in a decidedly Christian suburb of Waltham, Mass. ~ Caroline Leavitt

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised. ~ David Leavitt

Had I truly thought I would not die when he kissed me? But I did. For a moment the breath and life went out of me and there was no time and no tomorrow but only my lips against his. ~ Martine Leavitt

Annie Jump Cannon (left) and Henrietta Leavitt, whose unsung labours and incisive deductions made Hubble's breakthroughs possible. ~ Bill Bryson

Cautiously his foot explored, wiggled as it could, and finally felt warm flesh under the pants leg. ~ David Leavitt

I think it's crucial to live, play and work passionately. I'm inspired by my husband, my son and the sense of possibility in the world. ~ Caroline Leavitt

It is life that hurts you not death. ~ Martine Leavitt

Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody. ~ Caroline Leavitt

The way to get free of pain is to dive down into it. To acknowledge it. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I thought Oliver was trying hard before, but now I realize it's quite the opposite
he doesn't try, he just is, makes up his mind and doesn't check if it's going to work for his image or come off wrong. Since the rest of us are being so self-aware, his presence seems calculated. No one can possibly be that breezy, saying what he thinks, feeling what he feels. I can see why people don't like him for this very reason
it's so much easier to call him a poser.
Because if he's the real deal, then that makes the rest of us fakes. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

The Term Paper Artist' represents two models of writing, one of the little boy bouncing his ball, generating stories for the sheer pleasure of it, and the besieged adult, writing to make a living, having to contend with a very competitive, very unreliable world in which public image counts. ~ David Leavitt

Adolescence is the same tragedy being performed again and again. The only things that change are the stage props. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

And I mean, if there is a God it's probably a good idea to believe in him. But if there isn't a God, then we're just an accident of nature, a virus, pond scum gone berserk, and it won't matter one way or another if I believe or not because who cares?
And so if it doesn't matter, then I choose to believe. There's something mindful about it, about the universe having a heart, us being watched over, maybe life and everything meaning something. ~ Martine Leavitt

The girl longed for a love that could not be ended by death. From the time she was young, she knew that her true love was there, somewhere, living a life that would one day intersect her own. Knowing this made every day full of sweet possibility. Knowing that her true love lived and breathed and went about his day under her same sun made her fears vanish, her sorrows small, and her hopes high. Though she did not yet know his face, the color of his eyes, still she knew him better than anyone else knew him, knew his hopes and dreams, what made him laugh and cry. ~ Martine Leavitt

For me, photographs take their power from memory and emotion. A picture tells its own story, shaped by the mood or insights of the person you are at the time you see it. ~ Robert Keith Leavitt

Everyone stared at her, sorry for her but glad it had not happened to them. There were a few murmurs of sympathy, and a few people whispering all the reasons they thought Vilsa may have deserved what had happened. It is important to make people deserve what happens to them. If bad things can happen for no apparent reason, then bad things might happen to innocent us. ~ Martine Leavitt

There have been years where I've had to take a real job and I wrote during slow times and lunches. I think never forgetting how lucky I am to be able to do something I love has really fueled me. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Anything could happen in a cosmos that was part math and part magic. ~ Martine Leavitt

Susie: Maybe we're all making everything up as we go. ~ Martine Leavitt

'You might think of combinatorics as a machine too', the major says. 'A different sort of machine, though. Have you heard of Babbage's analytic engine? He never built it ... I have an analytic machine of my own-right here.' He taps his own skull. ~ David Leavitt

People laugh because they're nervous, or to cover up tension, or to flirt, or because there's some instant applause meter in their head telling them that it's the socially acceptable thing to do. Genuine laughter, I don't even think that happens daily. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Their relationship isn't perfect in a lot of ways, bit it's something real. And real should probably be the goal, not perfection. Every relationship is flawed; you just have to figure out how to make it work. Keep trying. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

A straight line can readily be drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to maxima and minima, thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variables and their periods. ~ Henrietta Swan Leavitt

I think it's very funny that someone would exaggerate to make himself look worse. ~ David Leavitt

Christmas was over. It had passed, as usual, in a fever of generosities, and left an aftertaste of swindle in its wake. "Anticippointment" Pamela said ... and there was in that invented word all the regret and resignation that forty-seven years of Christmases had built up in her. ~ David Leavitt

He loops his arm over my shoulder and we watch the waves in silence. We've had so many silences between us these last few months, bitter ones, loaded ones, empty ones, and hurtful ones. This one is perfect. It says things that words can't. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

My dirty little secret is I don't drive at all, though I have my license and I renew it every five years. I'm phobic. I keep worrying if I drive, I'll end up killing someone. I hoped that by writing about a car crash, I might understand and heal this phobia, but I didn't! I'm still phobic. ~ Caroline Leavitt

The last thing I wanted when things were just barely started with Dax was having my friends make aware. What if they told my family? What was there even to tell so far? We'd kissed twice. We'd exchanged a few texts. I thought about him constantly. I'd named our first three children.
So what? ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Everything they've said is tainted now. Every day was a lie. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me. ~ Caroline Leavitt

The dead can't change, but you can. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Novels are forged in passion, demand fidelity and commitment, often drive you to boredom or rage, sleep with you at night. They are the long haul. They are marriage. Stories, on the other hand, you can lose yourself in for a few weeks and then wrap up, or grow tired of and abandon and (maybe) return to later. They can cuddle you sweetly, or make you get on your knees and beg. ~ David Leavitt

When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Like I don't know who I am and I've lost all hope in humanity. ~ Lindsey Leavitt-Going Vintage

Because I like being around you." He's still looking out the window, and I wonder if he's focusing on one object when he says this and what that object is. "I probably shouldn't, but I do. And I can't say why. I mean, I can think of a bunch of reasons why."
Like? Like?
"But given … the obvious roadblock, I'm not sure how much we can get to know each other." He rushes on. "As people, because you're an interesting person and I value that in friendship. That's seriously what I'm after, not that I'm after you and I'm not talking about, you know, 'knowing' each other. Like in a biblical way or anything, although you're obviously pretty. I mean, very pretty and totally worth knowing both ways … Okay, shut it, Oliver. Shut it. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I'm sorry I kissed you."
"Don't apologize!"
"All right. Sorry."
"You don't get all the blame. I was here too, you know. Do you think I just run around kissing any boy who drags me into a toolshed?"
"No." Oliver's mouth twitches. "Do you have a lot of boys dragging you into toolsheds? ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Leavitt appeared, looming over him, a syringe in his hand. "I thought we'd come to an understanding, son. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to do this." He knelt down and stuck the needle in Thomas's neck, compressed the syringe with his thumb. Before he passed out, Thomas looked at Teresa again, their eyes meeting for just a few precious seconds. The world had already started to blur when they dragged her away, but he clearly heard what she called out to him. "Someday we'll be bigger." - ~ James Dashner

A younger writer, David Leavitt, would later say he envied White for having "such a representative life". And it's true: the zeitgeist blew through White more easily than it did through most people. ~ Christopher Bram

He tried to be a good man, to do the right things, to make the
world a little better than it had been before he had put his stamp
upon it. You could be generous with the love you gave, with the
care you took with others. You could follow all the command-
ments that made sense to you and still the world could sideswipe
you. There was no cause and effect. There was no karma. The
truth was that he wasn't so sure he understood how the world
worked anymore. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I don't know if I've ever really touched him. Maybe once or twice when passing papers back. You know, even shorter, his hair looks so soft. Maybe it's time I rub it a little. So I can give more concrete details.
I stretch my hand across my desk, but stop when I realize the horror of what I was about to do. Pet Sean. Have I lost my mind? ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Death is the ending of all true stories. ~ Martine Leavitt

The girl knew that quarrels would come because their lives were intertwined - how passionately one defends a heart that is vulnerable. ~ Martine Leavitt

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?' ~ Caroline Leavitt

Susie: Doesn't it make you feel kind of awesome that the world is beautiful for no other apparent reason than that it is? Like beauty has its own secret reason. It doesn't need human eyes to notice. It just wants to be glorious and unbelievable. ~ Martine Leavitt

Spouse or collaborator, it comes to the same thing. And there is work to be done. Always, always work to be done." -David Leavitt, "Partition," _The Indian Clerk_ ~ David Leavitt

He's going to want an explanation," I say.
"An explanation? You don't owe him anything. If you don't want to talk to him, don't. If you want to yell at him, do. If you want to slash his tires - "
"Ginnie."
"I was going to say don't. Or do. Whatever helps. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

A product name has to be specific. You know that Tasty Soup is tasty - that Hot Chips will burn off the roof of your mouth. ~ Caroline Leavitt

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I'm trying to abandon the present, but I don't even have the skills to master the past. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

I have to admit that many of the relationships I write about are destructive, but that's the yin to the yang of a good relationship. Maybe you have to experience the terrible ones to appreciate the good unions! ~ Caroline Leavitt

A true friend gives you exactly what you need, even if she has no idea why you need it. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

My lord, why do you trouble me by walking with me in the dark? It is cruel."
"I think to protect you from them," he said. ~ Martine Leavitt

If untimely death came only those who deserved that fate, Keturah, where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man's great gift, but one thing is not his to choose
the time and means of death. ~ Martine Leavitt

I guess it's hard to be the villain without a hero. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

Just because you see something doesn't mean it's really there. ~ Martine Leavitt

People love stories. They need stories. ~ Caroline Leavitt

To start with, at that time I'd gone to bed with probably three dozen boys, all of them either German or English; never with a woman. Nonetheless -- and incredible thought it may seem -- I still assumed that a day would come when I would fall in love with some lovely, intelligent girl, whom I would marry and who would bear me children. And what of my attraction to men? To tell the truth, I didn't worry much about it. I pretended my homosexuality was a function of my youth, that when I "grew up" it would fall away, like baby teeth, to be replaced by something more mature and permanent. I, after all, was no pansy; the boy in Croydon who hanged himself after his father caught him in makeup and garters, he was a pansy, as was Oscar Wilde, my first-form Latin tutor, Channing's friend Peter Lovesey's brother. Pansies farted differently, and went to pubs where the barstools didn't have seats, and had very little in common with my crowd, by which I meant Higel and Horst and our other homosexual friends, all of whom were aggressively, unreservedly masculine, reveled in all things male, and held no truck with sissies and fairies, the overrefined Rupert Halliwells of the world. To the untrained eye nothing distinguished us from "normal" men.

Though I must confess that by 1936 the majority of my friends had stopped deluding themselves into believing their homosexuality was merely a phase. They claimed, rather, to have sworn off women, by choice. For them, homosexuality was an ~ David Leavitt

She learned that there is a cruelty in the world. She did not yet understand that those who hurt others do so because they believe that people desire to hurt them. She did not know yet that such people suffer more than the ones they hurt, for they must live in their own skin, in a world of their own making, a world full of enemies. ~ Martine Leavitt

When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself. ~ David Leavitt

I was halfway between my home and the cookhouse when a mist of cloud began to creep across the early-risen moon. It darkened the ground enough that I did not see a small depression, and I stumbled. Immedietly I was steadied by some force I could not see, and then, as if the coming night clotted into a visible personage, I perceived that Lord Death was beside me. ~ Martine Leavitt

I have observed that you treat a man as an old garment to be taken apart and stitched again. Perhaps you could think of him as good cloth, rich fabric that wants only to be embroidered upon. And perhaps, if you will do that, you will see that you love Tailor yourself. ~ Martine Leavitt

Everyone had gone to school with someone's brother or known each other up at Cambridge. These were serious young leftist intellectuals, many of them communists devoted to the idea of a classless society, but they were also upper class and English and so almost unconsciously sought out others of their kind and mixed with them, while the working-class youth stood alone just outside the perimeter of this charmed circle, coming as close as he dared, barred from entry by an invisible boundary of accent. ~ David Leavitt

There's nothing sweeter than sweat. ~ Lindsey Leavitt

We mean you don't love any men," Gretta said in her even, matter-of-fact voice.
"You know very well that I adore all men," I said. "I have always thought them to be the dearest of things. ~ Martine Leavitt

I've always had a clear sense that time is short and we need to live as fully as we can in every moment. ~ Caroline Leavitt

How thin the air felt at the forest's edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm ... The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting ... How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow ... [M]y heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn't the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn't I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning? ~ Martine Leavitt

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year. ~ Caroline Leavitt