David Levithan Quotes - Page 3

I wake up feverish, sore, uncomfortable.Is it sickness or is it heartbreak?I can't tell.The thermometer says I'm normal, but I'm clearly not.

What's the point of all this magic, if no one really knows how to use it? But I guess the same could be said about life. Which is another form of magic, only less showy.

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

Self-preservation isn't worth it if you can't live with the self you're preserving.

It was a laugh that came from the tip of his toes, gaining force and soul as it traveled through his body and out into the world in mirthful bursts. There wasn't anything fake about it; it was an amusement park of a laugh, and when it appeared, you wanted to jump on board.

I think they would like the songs betterif I left out the names, or changedthe pronouns.

Max is a marvel to us. He will never have to come out because he will never have been kept in. Even though he has a mom and a dad, they made sure from the beginning to tell him that it didn't have to be a mom and a dad. It could be a mom and a mom, a dad and a dad, just a mom, or just a dad. When Max's early affections became clear, he didn't think twice about them. He doesn't see it as defining him. It is just a part of his definition.

That's what it felt like - that if I let a little of the hurt out, it would keep pouring out until I was a deflated balloon of a person, with a big monster of hurt in front of me.

Life goes on is a redundancy. Life is defined by its going on.

I'm told there's no going back. So I'm choosing forward.

I had made it somewhere special, and I'd gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I'd climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I found, was what I needed.

In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love for 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.

They have left the first stage of romance—the rhapsody of us. Where everything is you-me or me-you or a giddily tentative we. Now him and her are asserting themselves, each given a private, pensive depth. Within the rhapsody of us, Elijah could think, I don’t really know you, but I will. Now he is not so sure.

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.

It says if you mess up or make the wrong choice, you just have to keep at it until you do it right.

This is the power of a kiss: It does not have the power to kill you. But it has the power to bring you to life.

I once told him that the best way to break up a fight is to step between the two people and start singing ancient folk songs. But I’d never heard of anyone actually doing such a thing.

To feel such a longing for his own life, even as he’s living it—he wonders what that means.

What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they've lived past lives, because there is no way the years I've spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I'm feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In you heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are now just arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

The world is full of people who think different is synonymous with wrong.

I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.

The sound of words as they're said is always different from the sound they make when they're heard, because the speakers hears some of the sound from the inside.

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.

With all due respect, if you’re forty-three, then I’m a fetus.

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?

What a wonderful word, future. Of all the abstractions we can articulate to ourselves, of all the concepts we have that other animals do not, how extraordinary the ability to consider a time that's never been experienced. And how tragic not to consider it. It galls us, we with such a limited future, to see someone brush it aside as meaningless, when it has an endless capacity for meaning, and an endless number of meanings that can be found within it.

I want to have faith in strangers. I want to have faith in what we're all going to do next. But I'm worried. I see things shifting from United We Stand to God Bless America. I don't believe in God Bless America. I don't believe a higher power is standing beside us and guiding us. I don't believe we're being singled out. I believe much more in United We Stand. I have my doubts, but I want it to be true. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we really came together, if we really found a common humanity? The hitch is that you can't find a common humanity just because you have a common enemy. You have to find a common humanity because you believe that's true.

LYNDA (TO TINY):Look forward to the momentwhen it falls apart.Look forward to themomentwhen you mustrearrange yourheart.It might feel like theend of the world-but it's the beginning of yourart.

Love, he thinks, is a lie that people tell each other in order to make the world bearable. He is not up for the lie anymore. And nobody is going to lie to him like that, anyway. He's not even worth a lie.

and when hecatches meoff guardand says'i love you'i catch himoff guardand say 'i need your help.

this blue shirt i have is practically the same color as my jeans, and looking all-blue is something only cookie monster can pull off.

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

Boomer took bites of all six varieties, contemplating each one and "guring out the order in which he would then eat them. “I like thebrown one and the lighter brown one and the almost-brown one. I’m not so sure about the minty one. But really, I think the lebkuchen spiceone is the best.”“The what?”“The lebkuchen spice one.” He held it up for me. “This one.”“You’re making that up. What’s a lebkuchen spice? It sounds like a cross between a Keebler elf and a stripper. Hello, my name eesLebkuchen Spice, and I vant to show you my cooooookies...”“Don’t be rude!” Boomer protested. As if the cookie might be offended.

I can take everything on her face at face value, and that's valuable in a friend.

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 myselfand I heard them speaking to him.The desire for desire, that hopefor hope, the possibility of everythingtruly possible. I had so many friends,so many nods and conversations,so many things I’d always wantedto say to someone.

Hell, yes," Dev says, sitting up now. "Don't get me wrong - we're totally going to make the beast with two backs tonight. But if we do it right, it's going to feel like holding hands.

the answer is to just let gothe betrayal is to the pastthe cocoon dangles emptythe desire outlasts the objectthe effort lingersthe frustration is in how pointless the effort wasthe ghost does not make itself transparentthe heart knows nothing except its own mindthe ideas are not enoughthe jealousy is always therethe killing blow is sometimes the softestthe life you lead can be detouredthe moment you know cannot be taken backthe new you will try to bury the old methe opportunity has passedthe past is inopportunethe questions all grow from whythe reality will always be contendedthe sadness will ebbthe trouble is the time it might takethe ugly words cannot be erased, only discreditedthe versions are never the samethe wonder is that we make it throughthe x is the unknown variablethe yesterday cannot be repeatedthe zenith is the point when you look down and realize you’re no longer below

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

I just mean that if we go through this thing and it changes us so much, you have to hope that it changes us for the better, right? If goodness can’t come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.

Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don’t do wrong, and that becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where that 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.

My pride shut me up, my hurt shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.

All the quips in the world couldn’t prevent Oscar Wilde from becoming a lovesick fool.

yearning n. and adj.At te core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular - but one must take it because it is right.

What strange creatures we are, to find silence peaceful, when permanent silence is the thing we most dread

I once asked Randy how he knew that he had fallen in love with his girlfriend, Amy, and he just looked at me like it was the hardest question in the world. I expected some floral, florid explanation, about the air lightening and flute music filling his ears. This relationship that had him so transfixed—I expected a masterpiece of sentiment, one that would make me so happy for him and so empty inside. Instead he just turned to me and said,“The minute I knew I was in love was the minute when there was no question about it. One night I was lying in the dark, looking at her looking at me, and it just was there, undeniable.”There is no question about it.

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.

Because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore.

We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual. A—”“Do I really have to find a word for it?” Kyle interrupts. “Can’t it just be what it is?”“Of course,” I say, even though in the bigger world I’m not so sure. The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own.We pause for a moment. I wonder if that’s all—if he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, “You see, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”“Nobody does,” I assure him.

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

I have always found peace among books.

teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say "I wish someone would drop a bomb on this school right now," that means they have arranged for a nuclear arsenal to be emptied onto the school and should be immediately suspended and ridiculed. if they say they were merely coming up with a joking excuse to postpone a bio test, reply that all jokes are funny, and that since dropping a bomb on a school is not funny, it is therefore not a joke.

We stay this way until twilight colours the window and the hour calls me home

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!

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'll see you soon. I promise.”And there is, that moment, a shock of recognition. Elijah doesn't even know yet what he is recognizing. There is only the shock. The sense. That feeling of something happening that was meant to happen. Two people fitting in a space and time.For a moment.

Even though you're not my type, gender wise, you're certainly my type, person-wise.

So what else can I tell you?" I asked. "I mean, to get you to reveal Lily to me."She triangled her fingers under her chin. "Let's see. Are you a bed wetter?""Am I a...?""Bed wetter. I am asking if you are a bed wetter."I knew she was trying to get me to blink. But I wouldn't."No, ma'am. I leave my beds dry.""Not even a little drip every now and then?""I'm trying hard to see how this is germane.""I'm gauging your honesty. What is the last periodical you read methodically?""Vogue. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, that's mostly because I was in my mother's bathroom, enduring a rather long bowel movement. You know, the kind that requires Lamaze.""What adjective do you feel the most longing for?"That was easy. "I will admit I have a soft spot for fanciful.""Let's say I have a hundred million dollars and offer it to you. The only condition is that if you take it, a man in China will fall off his bicycle and die. What do you do?""I don't understand why it matters whether he's in China or not. And of course I wouldn't take the money."The old woman nodded."Do you think Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual?""All I can say for sure is that he never made a pass at me.""Are you a museumgoer?""Is the pope a churchgoer?""When you see a flower painted by Georgia O'Keefe, what comes to mind?""That's just a transparent ploy to get me to say the word vagina, isn't it? There. I said it. Vagina.

Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.

does it ever get easier?is there an end to these questions?do you have any answers?will you say them to me?can you stop this unraveling?will you bring me your closure?or am I the only onewho sees anymore?who sees . . .who sees . . .who sees?