Quotes by David Levithan

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.

This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.

You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...I Wanna Hold Your Hand. First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. Thats what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they cant hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to I Wanna Hold Your Hand. And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.

I want love to conquer all. But love cant conquer anything. It cant do anything on its own.It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf.

It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I cant even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. Its simply a matter of is and is no longer.

It doesnt have to be on Valentines Day. It doesnt have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesnt have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesnt have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date.It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit.It just has to be.

The way youre singing in your sleepThe way you look before you leapThe strange illusions that you keepYou dont knowBut Im noticingThe way your touch turns into arcsThe way you slide into the darkThe beating of my open heartYou dont knowBut Im noticing

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.

Its one thing to fall in love. Its another to feel someone else fall in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.

The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.

There has to be a moment at the beginning where you wonder whether you’re in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself. If the moment doesn’t pass, that’s it—you’re done. And if the moment does pass, it never goes that far. It stands in the distance, ready for whenever you want it back. Sometimes it’s even there when you thought you were searching for something else, like an escape route, or your lovers’ face.

What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe theyve lived past lives, because there is no way the years Ive spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what Im feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In you 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 now just arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

You know what’s a great metaphor for love? Sleeping beauty. Because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up.— Tiny Cooper

he is both the source of my happiness and the one i want to share it with.

Love doesn’t have to be on Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn’t have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn’t have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third day.It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirt.It just has to be.

Singing in the rain. Im singing in the rain. And its such a fucking glorious feeling. An unexpected downpour and I am just giving myself into it. Because what the fuck else can you do? Run for cover? Shriek and curse? No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it because if you can make yourself happy in the rain, then youre doing pretty alright in life.

You dont know me. You know one me, just like I know one you. And you cant know every me, and I cant know every you.

Life goes on. Get over it. Youre still young. Itll get better. Blah, Blah, Blah

But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself.

Im told theres no going back. So Im choosing forward.