Quotes by David Levithan

I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now Im seeing we dont live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. Its an infinite playlist.

I say good-bye to hope, but I also say good-bye to hopes disappointment.

I once asked Randy how he knew that he had fallen in love with his girlfriend, Amy, and he just looked at me like it was the hardest question in the world. I expected some floral, florid explanation, about the air lightening and flute music filling his ears. This relationship that had him so transfixed—I expected a masterpiece of sentiment, one that would make me so happy for him and so empty inside. Instead he just turned to me and said,“The minute I knew I was in love was the minute when there was no question about it. One night I was lying in the dark, looking at her looking at me, and it just was there, undeniable.”There is no question about it.

I have never wanted a lover. In order to have a lover, I must go back to the root of the word. For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to be loved.

But I dont know when that day will arrive, and it would be too easy to forget to marvel at the beauty in this moment. In every moment.

When I turned to look at you, I was afraid to move again—the moment was just too beautiful to be lost.

Its only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other. Yes, the differences between male and female are biological, but if you look at biology as a matter of percentage, there arent a whole lot of things that are different. Race is different purely as a social construct, not as an inherent difference. And religion - whether you believe in God or Yahweh or Allah or something else, odds are that at heart you want the same things. For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent thats different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.

Invoking the moral high ground somehow makes you lose it. Using a secret as a weapon makes you almost as bad as the transgressor.

It might feel like the end of the world--but its the beginning of your art.

There is this book, Destroy All the Cars. Its about how caring about something deeply can also make you hate the world, because the world can be really disappointing. But dont worry-- its also funny, too. Because thats how you get through all the disappointment, right? You have to find it all funny.

I read it a lot, whenever I find it in a library. Partly because I find new things every time I read it, but also because these BOOKS are always there for me. All of them are there for me. My life changes all the time, but books don’t 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 you’ve been before, and it welcomes you back.

I try to convince myself that its the alcohol talking. But alcohol cant talk. It just sits there. It cant even get itself out of the bottle.

Having grown up here, I always wonder what it would be like to see this city as a tourist. Is it ever a disappointment? I have to believe that New York always lives up to its reputation. The buildings really are that tall. The lights really are that bright. Theres truly a story on every corner. But it still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions. To not feel the bright lights even as they fill the air. To see the tall buildings and only feel a deep longing for the stars.

The quiet times are the ones to hold on to.

It is a horrible wonderful thing to be in love with you. To get to hear you sing for hour after hour but never be the subject of the song. To listen and listen and listen.

She is the weakness you think of as strength while I am the strength you have no idea is there.

Let’s always love each other, and never be in love with each other.

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

Betrayal. Lust. Secrecy. Devotion. I think we do these things to feel more alive. When the truth is that alive is alive -- you can feel it in anything, if you give it a chance.

He doesn’t want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last party, last night, last day, last goodbye), and then the world will change forever and he will go to college and eventually become an adult. That is not what he wants. He does not want those complications, that change. Not now.