David Levithan Quotes

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.

~ David Levithan

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

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.

~ David Levithan

The more kindness and justice are challenged, the more we must embrace them. Only when you are challenged - and only when you challenge yourself - do you discover what truly matters.

~ David Levithan

I just needed to realize that style was like personality - it didn't always have to be consistent, it just had to be something you lived with.

~ David Levithan

Long live protest songs, in whatever form they take.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

It’s a highly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn’t really care what you have to say.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

Whatever you had -- I don't know 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 much hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go.

~ David Levithan

you live each day one at a timeyou live every day all at onceyou live with the possibility of good-byeyou move on.

~ David Levithan

My life changes all the time, but books don't change. My reading of them changes-- I can bring new things to them each time. But the words are familiar words. The world is a place you've been before, and it welcomes you back.

~ David Levithan

I wake up.Immediately I have to figure out who I am. It’s not just the body—opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I’m fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth. The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you’re used to waking up in a new one each morning. It’s the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.Every day I am someone else. I am myself—I know I am myself—but I am also someone else.It has always been like this.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

Avery doesn’t know what these people are talking about, and since he’s driving, he can’t go online to check. The sensation he has is a strange, difficult one. He knows these people aren’t talking about him. But at the same time they are talking about him, in their blanket dismissal. And they’re also talking about us. Because so many of them are our age or older, stuck in previous decades of thought. The gays of today, the gays of yesterday—we’re all the same bother, all the same wrong. Not people, really. Just something to yell about.

~ David Levithan

I was always thinking in terms of too much or not enough, rarely allowing myself that crucial space in between. Except when he was around. Except when we were really together. Then I could forget—I couldn’t turn it off, but I could forget to turn it on. Gradually, the columns began to tip. I lost track of keeping track. In order to let us be, I let myself be.

~ David Levithan

I had never really thought of marriages as things that involved liking. I had just assumed this man-woman arrangement was yet another adult quirk, like flossing.

~ David Levithan

I can tell from the glint in her eyes that she’s at least an acquaintance of Dorothy.

~ David Levithan

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?

~ David Levithan

As we become the distant past, you become a future few of us would have imagined.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

A Cue from NatureRun outside during a thunderstormThat downpour, that conquered hesitation, that exhilarationThat’s what unlonely is like

~ David Levithan

I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist.

~ David Levithan

I say good-bye to hope, but I also say good-bye to hope's disappointment.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

But I don't know when that day will arrive, and it would be too easy to forget to marvel at the beauty in this moment. In every moment.

~ David Levithan

When I turned to look at you, I was afraid to move again—the moment was just too beautiful to be lost.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

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

~ David Levithan

It might feel like the end of the world--but it's the beginning of your art.

~ David Levithan

There is this book, Destroy All the Cars. It's about how caring about something deeply can also make you hate the world, because the world can be really disappointing. But don't worry-- it's also funny, too. Because that's how you get through all the disappointment, right? You have to find it all funny.

~ David Levithan

I read it a lot, whenever I find it in a library. Partly because I find new things every time I read it, but also because these BOOKS are always there for me. All of them are there for me. My life changes all the time, but books don’t change. My reading of them changes—I can bring new things to them each time. But the words are familiar words. The world is a place you’ve been before, and it welcomes you back.

~ David Levithan

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.

~ David Levithan

Having grown up here, I always wonder what it would be like to see this city as a tourist. Is it ever a disappointment? I have to believe that New York always lives up to its reputation. The buildings really are that tall. The lights really are that bright. There's truly a story on every corner. But it still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions. To not feel the bright lights even as they fill the air. To see the tall buildings and only feel a deep longing for the stars.

~ David Levithan

The quiet times are the ones to hold on to.

~ David Levithan

It is a horrible wonderful thing to be in love with you. To get to hear you sing for hour after hour but never be the subject of the song. To listen and listen and listen.

~ David Levithan