David Levithan Quotes - Page 2

It is always the ones who believe that are hurt the worst when things go wrong.

Just when we stopped wanting to kill ourselves, we started to die.

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.

It’s not easy,” she says, in that voice that mothers have, that mix of unwanted knowledge and small consolation. “Whatever you had—I don’t know exactly what it was, and that’s fine. But it must not be easy for you. You miss him, and that’s okay. But you have to figure that if it’s too hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go.

I want you to be honest with me. Even if it hurts. Although I would prefer for it not to hurt. - A

There are many things that can keep you in a relationship. Fear of being alone, Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life.A decision to settle for something that's okay. Because you don;t know if you can get any better. Or maybe there's the irrational belief that it will get better even if you know he won't change.

I don't have the heart to tell him that's the wrong way to think about the world. There will always be more questions Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go.

It's Miranda who speaks up. "You're gay," she says, with complete seriousness. "And I love you.

I had gotten so used to being alone, but never entirely used to it. Never used to it enough to stop wanting the alternative.

If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. You memories will be my most lasting impressions.

The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.

The word I think of is precarious. I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them.

He doesn’t want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last party, last night, last day, last goodbye), and then the world will change forever and he will go to college and eventually become an adult. That is not what he wants. He does not want those complications, that change. Not now.

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.

i want to say to her: i just want to be myself. and i want to be with someone who's just himself. that's all. i want to see through all the performance and all the pretending and get right to the truth.

the sadness will ebbthe trouble is the time it might take

Now she’s lit by the warm orange spreading from the horizon as not-quite-day, becomes not-quite-night

I try to convince myself that it's the alcohol talking. But alcohol can't talk. It just sits there. It can't even get itself out of the bottle.

It is a sound like loneliness—enough to let you know you’re there, but not enough to fill you with life.

Enlightenment is scary. Sometimes things look better in the dark.

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

There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with. There's a false beast that takes the form of instinct and harps on the pointlessness of everything that happens.

Feelings don’t follow rules. Guilt does. Fear does. But attraction? No way.

It's true, look at Erik Johnson on the dance floor. Seriously-look at him. Six feet tall, one hundred eighty pounds, all of which can be converted by the right clothes and the right song into a mass of headless joy. (the right hair helps, too). He treats his body like it's made of fireworks, each one timed to the beat. Is he dancing alone or dancing with everyone? here is the secret: it doesn't matter. he travelled for two hours to get to the city, and when it's all over, it will take him over two hours to get home. But it's worth it. Freedom isn't just about voting and marrying and kissing on the street, although all of these things are important. Freedom is also about what you will allow yourself to do.

After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why.

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.

The past and the future are complicated. It's the present that's simple.

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

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.

It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer.

The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It's as much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it happen.

Invoking the moral high ground somehow makes you lose it. Using a secret as a weapon makes you almost as bad as the transgressor.

it's like kissing a boy, finally, a boy

The way you argued with me, you would have thought that we were debating the existence of God or whether or not we should move in together. These kinds of fights can never be won – even if you’re the victor, you’ve hurt the other person, and there has to be some loss associated with that.

Part of my music is being alone, having that time to shut down all other noises to hear the tune underneath.

I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don't have the words for it, since we hadn't yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.

They wouldn't beat him up. They wouldn't break his ribs. He knew that. But they had other ways of breaking him - with silence, with disappointment, with disapproval.

tiny: did someone die?me: yeah, i did.he smiles again at that.tiny: well, then... welcome to the afterlife.

You know what’s a great metaphor for love? Sleeping beauty. Because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up.— Tiny Cooper

I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.

Depression has been likened to both a black cloud and a black dog. For someone like Kelsea, the black cloud is the right metaphor. She is surrounded by it, immersed within it, and there is no obvious way out. What she needs to do is try to contain it, get it into the form of the black dog. It will still follow her around wherever she goes; it will always be there. But at least it will be separate, and will follow her lead.

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.

One of the protestor's sign catches my eye. HOMISEXUALITY IS THE DEVIL'S WORK, it says. And once again I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn't make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.

I didn't let her go. She went. It's not my fault.She did it.She could undo it. This is feeling so fucking famliar.Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Of is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else?

People say that time slips through our fingers like sand. What they don't acknowledge is that some of the sand sticks to the skin. These are the memories that will remain, memories of the time when there was still time left.

We watch them grow, with sadness and amazement and fear. We have stepped away, but not entirely away. They know this. They sense it. We are no longer here, but we are not yet gone. And we will be like that for the rest of their lives.We watch, and they surprise us.We watch, and they surpass us.

Maybe fate's arithmetic is so diffuse that it's not arithmetic at all.

It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other. Yes, the differences between male and female are biological, but if you look at biology as a matter of percentage, there aren't a whole lot of things that are different. Race is different purely as a social construct, not as an inherent difference. And religion - whether you believe in God or Yahweh or Allah or something else, odds are that at heart you want the same things. For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.

I hate that would. Straight. At the very least, those of us who are nonstraight should get to be called curvy. Or scenic. Actually, I like that: 'Do you think she's straight?' 'Oh no. She's scenic.

Falling in love with someone doesn’t mean you know any better how they feel. It only means you know how you feel.

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.

It's hard to think of such things when you are busy dreaming or loving or screwing. The context falls away.

I told her about the time that I got so tired of you stealing the sheets that in my sleep-weary logic I decided that the thing to do was to tie them around my legs, knot and all, and how, when you attempted to steal them that night, you ended up yanking me into you, and I was so startled that I sprang up, tripped, and was nearly concussed.

I showed him the Post-it. “You see They’re from Lily.”“Who’s Lily?”“Some girl.”“Ooh... a girl!”“Boomer, we’re not in third grade anymore. You don’t say, ‘Ooh... a girl!’”“What? You fucking her?”“Okay, Boomer, you’re right. I liked ‘Ooh... a girl!’ much more than that. Let’s stick with ‘Ooh... a girl!

This is what you do now to give your day topography--scan the boxes, read the news, see the chain of your friends reporting about themselves, take the 140-character expository bursts and sift through for the information you need. It's a highly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn't really care what you have to say. The illusion of participation can sometimes lead to participation. But more often than not, it only leads to more illusion, dressed in the guise of reality.

It felt good to be surrounded by books, by all this solid knowledge, by these objects that could be ripped page by page but couldn't be torn if the pages all held together.

The quiet times are the ones to hold on to.

It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it's lonely, because you feel you can't talk about it. You feel it's something between you and the body. You feel it's a battle you will never win . . . and yet you fight it day after day, and it wears you down. Even if you try to ignore it, the energy it takes to ignore it will exhaust you.

If you were a country," I said, "what would your national anthem be?"I meant a pre-existing song -- "What a Wonderful World" or "Que Sera, Sera" or something to make it a joke, like "Hey Ya!" ("I would like, more than anything else, for my nation to be shaken like a Polaroid picture.")

Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.