Quotes by 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.

Self-preservation isnt worth it if you cant live with the self youre preserving.

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

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 its the beginning of yourart.

Whatever you had -- I dont know what it was, and thats fine. But it must not be easy for you. You miss him, and thats okay. But you have to figure that if its too much hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go.

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

My life changes all the time, but books dont 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 youve been before, and it welcomes you back.

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.

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 shes straight? Oh no. Shes scenic.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

I’ve had librarians say to me, “People in my school don’t agree with homosexuality, so it’s difficult to have your book on the shelves.” Here’s the thing: Being gay is not an issue, it is an identity. It is not something that you can agree or disagree with. It is a fact, and must be defended and represented as a fact.To use another part of my identity as an example: if someone said to me, “I’m sorry, but we can’t carry that book because it’s so Jewish and some people in my school don’t agree with Jewish culture,” I would protest until I reached my last gasp. Prohibiting gay books is just as abhorrent…Discrimination is not a legitimate point of view. Silencing books silences the readers who need them most. And silencing these readers can have dire, tragic consequences. Never forget who these readers are. They are just as curious and anxious about life as any other teenager.

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

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

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

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.

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