Wide Awake David Levithan Quotes

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. ~ David Levithan

There are boys lying awake, hating themselves. There are boys screwing for the right reasons and boys screwing for the wrong ones. There are boys sleeping on benches and under bridges, and luckier unlucky boys sleeping in shelters, which feel like safety but not like home. There are boys so enraptured by love that they can't get their hearts to slow down enough to get some rest, and other boys so damaged by love that they can't stop picking at their pain. There are boys who clutch secrets at night in the same way they clutch denial in the day. There are boys who do not think of themselves at all when they dream. There are boys who will be woken in the night. There are boys who fall asleep with phones to their ears. ~ David Levithan

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed. ~ Henry David Thoreau

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

Lying awake beside you, these thoughts run through my head. ~ David Levithan

She asked me what was wrong, and I told her I had to end it. She was surprised, and asked my why I thought so. I told her it wasn't a thought, more a feeling, like I couldn't breathe and knew I had to get some air. It was a survival instinct, I told her.
She said it was time for dinner. Then she sat me down and told me not to worry. She said moments like this were like waking up in the middle of the night: You're scared, your'e 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. ~ David Levithan

Person after person after person ... they all converge at one moment, irrevocably changing the course of a thousand more live.
As it is with accidents, so it is with love. ~ David Levithan

I want to say more, but don't know what the words are supposed to be. I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable night time conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when there's no room in the air. ~ David Levithan

Here i sit all broken hearted
Came to sleep that's when it started.
Broken dreams from behind
Fall beneath me so unkind.

Sorrow swallows sucks and chews,
All the dreams I had to lose.
Thinking of all the lies i was told
Makes me feel hollow and cold.

Behind my smile I force on my face
Is a broken man not having a place.
I wonder aimless through the night
Depression is the demon I fight.

They all ask me how I'm doing
Its hard to stop the pain pursuing.
I choke pain down and grin so wide
Only to kill the fear inside.

Sleep deprived awake and tired
this curse is a trap all ready wired.
Just sleep more they all say
I would if the past would go away.

It's better now to be alone
Than lied and cheated to the bone.
I hate the life I've lived thus far
And gladly wear this awful scar.

It has gotten easier that is no lie,
I no longer wish that I would die.
I dream of days when I feel this pain
and deal with it without strain.

I do not know where I will go
only god will ever know.
I pray for all the promises forgotten,
the empty chords that fell all rotten.

I aim to search look and seek
This life i want simple and meek.
It makes the past so very grey
The thoughts of future day

The night will fade and dissolve
I march on with no resolve
Ahead i walk ~ Private

The thing about possibilities: there are some you want much more than others. Or only one you want much more than everything else. ~ David Levithan

The unwarranted devotion. Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can't deal with the fear of being alone. The hope tinged with doubt, and the doubt tinged with hope. Every time I see these feelings in someone else's face, it weighs me down. ~ David Levithan

Maybe there is hope in the fragments, that what is lost can always be filled in by someone who knows. ~ David Levithan

We're librarians, sir. And we will not let you check out this future librarian unless your prove to us that you'll take good care of him when he's in your home. ~ 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

Most dancers find their confidence in dancing. Right is mere millimeters away from wrong. Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don't do wrong, and it becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where confidence lasts longer than the dance. Seconds at first. Then minutes. Then maybe it'll be there when you're walking into a party, or meeting people after a show. You know you have something desirable, and you know you can move. ~ David Levithan

You didn't move your arm. You let me rest there. You didn't pull away. You pulled closer. You were so good to me. You knew and pretended
you didn't.
"Let's always love each other, and never be in love with each other."
And I agreed. ~ David Levithan

The wide awake man seizes opportunities or makes them, and thus those who are widest awake usually come to the front. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

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

And still, for all the jealously, all the doubt, sometimes I will be struck with a kind of awe that we're together. That someone like me could find someone like you
it renders me wordless. Because surely words would conspire against such luck, would protest the unlikelihood of such a turn of events. ~ David Levithan

As soon as Neil is out of the shower, he texts Peter.
You up? he asks.
And the reply comes instantly:
For anything. ~ David Levithan

I decided if I were ever to get into booze and woman, my line would be Excuse me, madam, but I would really love to bed and muss you ... Are you perchance free this evening? ~ David Levithan

Dreaming and loving and screwing. None of these are identities. Maybe when other people look at us, but not to ourselves. We are so much more complicated than that. ~ David Levithan

meander, v.

"...because when it all comes down to it, there's no such thing as a two-hit wonder. So it's better just to have that one song that everyone knows, instead of diluting it with a follow-up that only half succeeds. I mean, who really cares what Soft Cell's next single was, as long as we have 'Tainted Love'?"
I stop. You're still listening.
"Wait," I say. "What was I talking about? How did we get to 'Tainted Love'?"
"Let's see," you say, "I believe we started roughly at the Democratic gains in the South, then jumped back to the election of 1948, dipping briefly into northern constructions of the South, vis-a-vis Steel Magnolias, Birth of a Nation, Johnny Cash, and Fried Green Tomatoes. Which landed you on To Kill a Mockingbird, and how it is both Southern and universal, which -- correct me if I'm wrong -- got us to Harper Lee and her lack of a follow-up novel, intersected with the theory, probably wrong, that Truman Capote wrote the novel, then hopping over to literary one-hit wonders, and using musical one-hit wonders to make a point about their special place in our culture. I think."
"Thank you," I say. "That's wonderful. ~ David Levithan

Has my heart gone to sleep?
Have the beehives of my dreams
stopped working, the waterwheel
of the mind run dry,
scoops turning empty,
only shadow inside?
No, my heart is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
Not asleep, not dreaming
its eyes are opened wide
watching distant signals, listening
on the rim of vast silence ~ Antonio Machado

Doldrums, n.
The proper verb for depression is sink. ~ David Levithan

What do you want to trust me with tonight?"
A sigh escaped forcefully, waving the white flag that I was a melted, scorched woman at those words.
"Anything," I whispered back. ~ Shelly Crane

I don't get this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired. ~ David Levithan

Society is composed of slow Christians and wide-awake sinners. ~ Josh Billings

-Question: "On a scale from one to ten how fierce are you?"- David: "You are just asking me this because I am gay ... What the fuck does that mean?" -David Levithan, at Teen Lit Con- ~ David Levithan

I wanted love to conquer all. But love can't conquer anything. ~ David Levithan

Tibetans are not famed for their perseverance. Full of enthusiasm at the start, and ready for anything new, their interest flags before long. For this reason I kept losing pupils and replacing them, which was not very satisfactory for me. The children of good families whom I taught were without exception intelligent and wide awake, and were not inferior to our children in comprehension. In the Indian schools the Tibetan pupils are ranked for intelligence with Europeans. One must remember that they have to learn the language of their teachers. In spite of that handicap, they are often at the head of the class. There was a boy from Lhasa at St. Joseph's College, at Darjeeling, who was not only the best scholar in the school, but also champion in all the games and sports. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Even if you're the victor, you've hurt the other person, and there has to be some loss associated with that. ~ David Levithan

As we gossiped over grilled cheese, I rubbed my bare ankle against hers. Not to be provocative or possessive. Just because it felt good to have that spot on me touch that spot on her. ~ David Levithan

When things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost
the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed. ~ David Levithan

He thinks it's because he was born in the wrong body, but we want to whisper in his ears that many of us were born in the right bodies and still felt foreign inside them, felt betrayed. We completely misunderstood our bodies. We punished them, berated them, held them to an Olympian ideal that was deeply unfair to them. We loathed the hair in some places and the lack of hair in others. We wanted to everything to be tighter, stronger, harder, faster. We rarely recognized our own beauty unless someone else was recognizing it for us. We starved or we pushed or we hid or we paraded, and there was always another body we thought was better than ours. There was always something wrong, most time numerous things wrong. When we were healthy, we were ignorant. We could never be content within our own skin.
Breathe, we want to tell Avery. Feel yourself breathe. Because that is as much a part of your body as anything else.
Avery, we whisper, you are a marvel.
And he is. He may never believe it, but he is. ~ David Levithan

I have lied so often that I've lost track of the truth. ~ David Levithan

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

Jed is not a smoker
but he's smoked.
i am not a smoker
and i have never smoked ~ David Levithan

No!" Tony/Toni/Toné exclaims. "I saw the two of you canoodling. You're a regular Johnny Castle." I have no idea who Johnny Castle is, but I definitely approve of the name. ~ 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

I think you're nice to me and that scares the fuck out of me. Because when a guy's a jerk or an asshole, it's easier because you know where you stand. ~ Rachel Cohn

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