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David Levithan Quotes

David Levithan is an American young adult fiction author and editor. His first book, Boy Meets Boy, was published by Knopf Books for Young Readers in 2003. He has written numerous works featuring strong male gay characters, most notably Boy Meets Boy and Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List.

At 19, Levithan received an internship at Scholastic Corporation where he began working on The Baby-sitters Club series. Levithan still works for Scholastic as an editorial director. Levithan is also the founding editor of PUSH, a young-adult imprint of Scholastic Press focusing on new voices and new authors. PUSH publishes edgier material for young adults and is where Patricia McCormick got her start with 2002's Cut.

In an interview with Barnes & Noble, Levithan claimed that he learned how to write books that were both funny and touching from Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. He continues to work as both a writer and editor saying, "I love editing just as much, if not more than writing". Levithan's first collaboration with Rachel Cohn, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, was published in 2006 and adapted for the big screen in 2008. His novel Love is the Higher Law was published in August 2009 by Knopf Books for Young Readers.

Levithan has been a resident of Hoboken, New Jersey.

In 2016, Levithan won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for The Realm of Possibility, Boy Meets Boy, Love Is the Higher Law, How They Met and Other Stories, Wide Awake, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

✵ 7. September 1972  •  Other names דיוויד לויתן
David Levithan photo

Works

Every Day
Every Day
David Levithan
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Every Day
Every Day
David Levithan
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
David Levithan: 447 quotes17 likes

Famous David Levithan Quotes

“It's one thing to fall in love. It's another to feel someone else falling in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Variant: It's one thing to fall in love. It's another to feel someone else fall in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.
Source: Every Day

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

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

“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?”

David Levithan

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“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.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

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

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“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.”

David Levithan book Another Day

Source: Another Day

David Levithan Quotes about love

“Most of the time when we think we're looking for death, we're really looking for love.”

David Levithan book Another Day

Source: Another Day

“Its a fine line between love and stalking.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

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

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Variant: obstinate, adj.
Sometimes it becomes a contest: Which is more stubborn, the love or the two arguing people caught within it?
Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“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.”

David Levithan

Source: Two Boys Kissing

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

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

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

David Levithan

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

David Levithan Quotes about people

“There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people who don't
see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

“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 book Wide Awake

Source: Wide Awake

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

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

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

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

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

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“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.”

David Levithan book Another Day

Source: Another Day

David Levithan: Trending quotes

“I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too.”

David Levithan

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

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

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

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

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

David Levithan Quotes

“you’d think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it’s painful.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“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.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

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

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

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

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

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

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“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.”

David Levithan

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

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

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

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

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“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 book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

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

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“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.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“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.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“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.”

David Levithan

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“.

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.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

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

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

“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.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

“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.”

David Levithan

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

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

David Levithan

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“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.”

David Levithan

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

David Levithan

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“.

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.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

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

David Levithan

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“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.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

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

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“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.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Variant: .

"I want my books to have their own shelves", you said, and that's how I knew it would be okay to live together.
Source: The Lover's Dictionary

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

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“You will always be my always.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Variant: You will always be my always", he assured me.
Source: The Realm of Possibility

“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.”

David Levithan

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“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.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

“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?”

David Levithan

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

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

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“I'm not even going to try.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“.

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

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

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

David Levithan

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

“.

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.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“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”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

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

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

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

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

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