Quotes by David Levithan

Just when we stopped wanting to kill ourselves, we started to die.

I once told him that the best way to break up a fight is to step between the two people and start singing ancient folk songs. But I’d never heard of anyone actually doing such a thing.

yearning n. and adj.At te core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.

I just mean that if we go through this thing and it changes us so much, you have to hope that it changes us for the better, right? If goodness can’t come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.

My lines all curve. I tend to connect the wrong dots.

Look, look, we tell each other. Its Tom!Hes Mr. Bellamy to his history students. But hes Tom to us. Tom! Its so good to see him. So wonderful to see him. Tom is one of us. Tom went through it all with us. Tom made it through. He was there in the hospital with so many of us, the archangel of St. Vincents, our healthier version, prodding the doctors and calling over the nurses and holding our hands and holding the hands of our partners, our parents, our little sisters - anyone who had a hand to be held. He had to watch so many of us die, had to say goodbye so many times. Outside of our rooms he would get angry, upset, despairing. But when he was with us, it was like he was powered solely by an engine of grace. Even the people who loved us would hesitate at first to touch us - more from the shock of our diminishment, from the strangeness of how we were both gone and present, not who we were but still who we were. Tom became used to this. First because of Dennis, the way he stayed with Dennis until the very end. He could have left after that, after Dennis was gone. We wouldnt have blamed him. But he stayed. When his friends got sick, he was there. And for those of us hed never know before - he was always a smile in the room, always a touch on the shoulder, a light flirtation that we needed. The y should have made him a nurse. They should have made him mayor. He lost years of his life to us, although thats not the story hed tell. He would say he gained. And hed say he was lucky, because when he came down with it, when his blood turned against him, it was a little later on and the cocktail was starting to work. So he lived. He made it to a different kind of after from the rest of us. It is still an after. Every day if feel to him like an after. But he is here. He is living.A history teacher. An out, outspoken history teacher. The kind of history teacher we never would have had. But this is what losing most of your friends does: It makes you unafraid. Whatever anyone threatens, whatever anyone is offended by, it doesnt matter, because you have already survived much, much worse. In fact, you are still surviving. You survive every single, blessed day.It makes sense for Tom to be here. It wouldnt be the same without him.And it makes sense for him to have taken the hardest shift. The night watch.Mr. Nichol passes him the stopwatch. Tom walks over and says hello to Harry and Craig. Hes been watching the feed, but its even more powerful to see these boys in person. He gestures to them, like a rabbi or a priest offering a benediction.Keep going, he says. Youre doing great.Mrs. Archer, Harrys next-door neighbor, has brought over coffee, and offers Tom a cup. He takes it gratefully.He wants to be wide awake for all of this.Every now and then he looks to the sky.

its colder than a witchs tit in a steel bra

I dont like to do what people expect. Why should I live up to their expectations instead of my own?

Be careful what youre doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.

Ultimately, the universe doesnt care about us. Time doesnt care about us. Thats why we have to care about each other.

The devil doesnt make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.

i think the idea of a mental health day is something completely invented by people who have no clue what its like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying i dont want to deal with things today and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide.

tiny: did someone die?me: yeah, i did.he smiles again at that.tiny: well, then... welcome to the afterlife.

Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don’t do wrong, and that becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where that confidence lasts longer than the dance. Seconds at first. Then minutes. Then maybe it’ll be there when you’re walking into a party, or meeting people after a show. You know you have something desirable, and you know you can move.

When you dance, you measure distance as if it’s a solid thing; you make precise judgments every time two bodies exist in relation to each other. So I knew right away the definition of the space between us.

Most dancers find their confidence in dancing. Right is mere millimeters away from wrong. Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don’t do wrong, and it becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where confidence lasts longer than the dance. Seconds at first. Then minutes. Then maybe it’ll be there when you’re walking into a party, or meeting people after a show. You know you have something desirable, and you know you can move.

I had yet to learn that when it came to gender, I was both and neither.

Pink is female - but why? Are girls any more pink than boys? Are boys any more blue than girls? Its something that has been sold to us, mostly so other things can be sold to us.

Even though youre not my type, gender wise, youre certainly my type, person-wise.

I think they would like the songs betterif I left out the names, or changedthe pronouns.