David Levithan Quotes

A photograph it a souvenir of a memory. It is not a moment. It is the looking at the photograph that becomes the moment. Your own moment.

It is its own form of conversation -- you can learn a lot about people from the stories they tell, but you can also know them from the way they sing along, whether they like the windows up or down, if they live by the map or by the world, if they feel the pull of the ocean.

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.

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.

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.

You don't know, but I'm noticing.

I'm swimming in your cadences that you permeate my very language.

this is what i never allowed myself to need. and of course what i've been needing all along.

If you let the world in, you open yourself up to the world. Even if the world doesn't know that you're there.

me: just don't ask about his forty-three ex-boyfriends, okay? or ask him about why he's carrying around an axe. mom:... me: i'm kidding about the axe part.

People take love's continuity for granted, just as they take their body's continuity for granted. They don't realize that the best thing about love is its regular presence. Once you can establish that, it's an added foundation to your life.

I wake up thinking of yesterday. The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.

Everyone tried with me. And everytime, it felt like the whole point of life was to see if trying was ever enough.

Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be.

I think they have compatible silences.

apparel, n.: There are times I don’t mind doing the laundry, because folding your clothes reminds me of the shape of you.

It's as if when you love someone, they become your reason.

I guess it's a choice we make," she said. "What's a choice?" I asked. And she said, "How much of the world we let in.

I love you,” she says. “I love you,” I say. And then we hang up, because nothing else needs to be said after that. I want to give Zara her life back. Even if I feel I deserve something like this, I don’t deserve it at her expense.

Once you experience enormity, it lingers everywhere you look, and want to be every word you say.

You can't deny that there's something between us." "No. There is. When I saw you today--I didn't know I'd been waiting for you until you were there. And then all of that waiting rushed through me in a second. That's something... but I don't know if it's certainty.

This is my life, I think. I am an accumulation of objects.

It is much harder to lie to someone's face. But. It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone's face.

It is not desire. Instead it is something deeper. I don't want to be with him constantly and forever. I want to be with him for the moment, and I want the moments to go on forever.

The important thing is for the characters to feel real, and to be given the humanity they are due. That granting of humanity is what separates a full portrait from a stereotype.

If other people see you differently, you’ll end up seeing them differently, too.

There was a pause. I was still scared by every gap in our conversation, fearing that this was it, the point where we had nothing left to say. I was still trying to impress you, and I still wanted to be impressed by you, so I could pass along pieces of your impressiveness to my friends, convincing myself this was possible.

Long live protest songs, in whatever form they take.

Part of love is letting a person be who they want to be

I have learned how to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present, because that is where I am destined to live.

There's no way to release yourself from a memory. It ends when it wants to end, whether it's in a flash or long after you've begged it to stop.

The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it's the temperature of happiness.

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

The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations - all of them rearranging themselves so this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your 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 just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

Its almost scary how amateur I am when it comes to musicals - Im a musical goer, but I am not as obsessed with musicals as perhaps some of my theatrical friends are.

I want to know why this is such a part of me. I want to know why this thing that happened to other people has happened so much to me. I keep looking for the lesson.

You're giving up. You're slipping into being miserable and if you are being miserable, then it's all about you again. But it's not all about you. Love doesn't work that way.

My lines all curve. I tend to connect the wrong dots.

Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? why do we feel we need to disconnect in order to connect? If I wrote "Dear Sofia" or "Dear Boomer" or "Dear Lily's Great-Aunt" at the top of this postcard, wouldn't that change the words that followed? Of course it would. But the question is: When I wrote "Dear Lily," was that just a version of "Dear Myself"? I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too

incessant adj. The doubts. You had to save me from my constant doubts. That deep-seeded feeling that I wasn't good enough for anything I was a fake at my job I wasn't your equal my friends would forget me if I moved away for a month. It wasn't as easy as hearing voices nobody was telling me this. It was just something I knew. Everyone else was playing along but I was sure that one day they would all stop.

This is as much a part of my story as anything else. Friendship is love as much as any romance.

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

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.

Now when I have to remember a date, all I have to do is consult my rap sheet.

You are happy even if you are afraid to admit it.

You wanna-I dunno-get coffee or something sometime?

I want to take back at least half of the “I love you”s, because I didn’t mean them as much as the other ones.

The way you're singing in your sleep The way you look before you leap The strange illusions that you keep You don't know But I'm noticing The way your touch turns into arcs The way you slide into the dark The beating of my open heart You don't know But I'm noticing