David Levithan Quotes

I tried to shut myself down completely, put up my best screensaver personality to coast through the day. I didn't want to see her. I was desperate to see her. I wanted to hold it together. I wanted to melt down right at her feet and scream, Look what you've done to me.

~ David Levithan

It doesn’t work,” she continues, unclasping her hands, smoothing her skirt. “What you’re feeling right now doesn’t work. You can’t wander around and think the wandering will call them back. Believe me. I know you don’t want to hear the long view, but let me tell you. You are so young. I know it’s none of my business. But still.

~ David Levithan

I’m so sorry,” I continue. And it’s like the last word is a hurdle and I can’t leap it, because something in the word snags my voice and suddenly I am giving everything up. I am letting my shoulders fall and I am feeling myself become the absence, feeling myself become that gasp and sob.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

So what do you have to confess now?I don't know why I'm saying any of this, except that is the truth. I'm confessing that I don't know if I'm ready for this.What is 'this'?Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

I realized I would always be missing something. That no matter what I did, I would always be missing something else. And the only way to live, the only way to be happy, was to make sure the things I didn’t miss meant more to me than the things I missed. I had to think about what I wanted, outside the heat of wanting.

~ David Levithan

happy to see me and unhappy to see me at the same time

~ David Levithan

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.

~ 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

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.

~ David Levithan

If we actually thought about every decision we made, we'd be paralyzed ... You have to decide which decisions you're actually going to make, and then you have to let the rest of them go.

~ David Levithan

There will always be more questions. Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go.

~ David Levithan

Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends—an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels—and it is that—comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there.

~ David Levithan

So what’s your story?” Ryan asks.Avery looks up at him, hand still in the water. “My story?”“Yeah. Everybody has at least one.

~ David Levithan

He plants himself right there in front of Craig’s mother and says, “You need to love him. I don’t care who you thought he was, or who you want him to be, you need to love him exactly as he is because your son is a remarkable human being. You have to understand that.”And Craig’s mother whispers back, “I know. I know.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

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!

~ 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

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

~ David Levithan

You really think love needs to have a future?”“Absolutely.”“Good,” Lily said. “So do I.”“Good,” I echoed, leaning in. “So do you.”“Don’t repeat what I say,” she told me, swatting at my arm.“Don’t repeat what I say,” I murmured, smiling.“You’re being silly,” she said, but the silliness was falling out of her voice.“You’re being silly,” I assured her.“Lily is the greatest girl who ever was.”I drew closer. “Lily is the greatest girl who ever was.”For a moment, I think we’d forgotten where we were.And then the officers returned, and we were reminded once again.

~ David Levithan

Your Temporary Santa, He says presents aren't important, but I think they are- not because of how much they cost, but for the opportunity they provide to say 'I understand you.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

Her mind is an unquiet one, words and thoughts and impulses constantly crashing into each other.

~ David Levithan

He kisses me back with a kiss like a smile.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

The promise of a kiss will carry us forward.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

elliptical, adj.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.

~ David Levithan

They should be going to sleep, but good company is the enemy of sleep.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

Really, weren't these facts just placeholders until the long view could really assert itself?

~ David Levithan

i am like a dead begoniahanging upside down because like a dead begonia I don't give a fuck

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

It’s been said of me that I know how to love well, if any person alive can possess such knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us.It is all such a blessing—in the beginning, and the end, and the during.

~ David Levithan