David Levithan Quotes

“Breathing is hard. When you cry so much, it makes you realize that breathing is hard.”

“How can you spend hours every day trying in small ways to figure out who you are, then have a near-stranger give you a sentence of yourself that says it better than you ever could?”

“i am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. those seem to be the two choices. everything else is just killing time.”

“I don't want to fall. All I want to do is stand on solid ground.”

“That has to be what love is - seeing what a mess he is and loving him anyway, because you know you're a mess, too, maybe even worse.”

“Its a fine line between love and stalking.”

“Which is more stubborn, the love or the two arguing people caught within it?”

“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.”

“Because when something happens, she's the person I want to tell. The most basic indicator of love.”

“Deep down, you see, I long to be arcane, esoteric. I would love to confound people with their own language.”

“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.”

“I have taken advantage of other people's weaknesses in order to cover my own.”

“What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.”

“If smart people are parodying it, that's a sure sign that some less smart people are believing it.”

“I find myself looking into people's eyes more than I ever did before. And I realize, that's where we stop being a certain gender or color. Just look right into the center of the eye.”

“underneath all that denial, you're someone who's deeply, deeply nice.”

“You like someone who can’t like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.”

“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.”

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

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

“If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: 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.”

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

“We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.”

“That's what the voices in your head are for, to get you through the silent parts.”

“It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored.”

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

“I want love to conquer all. But love can't conquer anything. It can't do anything on it's own.
It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf.”

“Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.”

“Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.”

“when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.”

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

“If you stare at the center of the universe, there is coldness there. A blankness. Ultimately, the universe doesn't care about us. Time doesn't care about us. That's why we have to care about each other.”

“.

Last night, I got up the courage to ask you if you regretted us.
"There are things I miss," you said. "But if I didn't have you, I'd miss more.”

“People are rarely as attractive in reality as they are in the eyes of the people who are in love with them. Which is, I suppose, as it should be.”

“Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.”

“I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.”

“I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable. I particularly loved the adjective bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.”

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

“Love and I once had a great relationship, but I fear we've broken up. It cheated on me, wrecked my heart, and then went on to date other people. A lot of other people. And I can't stand to watch it, since love's going to cheat on them too.”

“I get it. The things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.”

“I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.”

“.

There are times when I doubt everything. When I regret everything you've taken from me, everything I've given you, and the waste of all the time I've spent on us.”

“You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.”

“When first love ends, most people eventually know there will be more to come. They are not through with love. Love is not through with them. It will never be the same as the first, but it will be better in different ways.”

“She is so lost in her sadness that she has no idea how visible it is.”

“I close my eyes. And i scream. If my whole world is crashing down around me, then I am going to make the sound of the crashing. I want to scream until all my bones break.”

“You like him because he's a lost boy. Believe me, I've seen it happen before. But do you know what happens to girls who love lost boys? They become lost themselves. Without fail.”

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

“I want my own books to have their own shelves," you said, and that's how I knew it would be okay to live together.”

“The clock always ticks. There are times you don't hear it, and there are times that you do.”

“You will always be my always.”

“We'd said we'd keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it's gone, it's gone. We should have said we'd keep in words, because they are all we can string between us--words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen.”

“I am always amazed by people who know something is wrong but still insist on ignoring it, as if that will somehow make it go away. They spare themselves the confrontation, but end up boiling in resentment anyway.”

“Getting what you want is just as difficult as not getting what you want. Because then you have to figure out what to do with it instead of figuring out what to do without it.”

“Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?”

“She has been hanging on to the hope of him for so long that she doesn't realize there isn't anything left to hope for.”

“need is never a good basis for any relationship. it has to be much more than that.”

“I'm not even going to try.”

“.

I spent all this time building a relationship. Then one night I left the window open and it started to rust.”

“I notice you, I want to say. Even when no one else does, I do. I will.”

“You have to believe there are kisses and laughs and risks worth taking.”

“.

I never understood why anyone would have sex on the floor. Until I was with you and I realized: you don't realize you're on the floor.”

“I'm not good at relationships
I always manage to find the flaws
sometimes in others
but mostly my own.
I foretell the ending
then go and create the cause
save myself
and end up alone”

“Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can't deal with the fear of being alone.”

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

“Part of growing up is making sure your sense of reality isn't entirely grounded in your own mind.”