Quotes by David Levithan

I stop at the tune store, where Im greeted by Javier and Jules. Half the store is Javiers, half is Juless—they have entirely different musical tastes, so you have to know going in whether the tune youre looking for is more like Javier or Jules. They have been together for more than twenty years, and today as they offer me cider and argue the blues, I want to ask them how theyve done it. To be together with someone for twenty years seems like an eternity to me. I cant seem to manage twenty days. Twenty weeks would be a stretch. How can they stand there behind the counter, spinning songs for each other day in and day out? How can they find things to say—how can they avoid saying things theyll always regret? How do you stay together? I want to ask them, the same way I want to ask my happy parents, the same way I want to go up to old people and ask them what is it like to live so long?

If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the painful process of finding it.

If you were a country, I said, what would your national anthem be?I meant a pre-existing song -- What a Wonderful World or Que Sera, Sera or something to make it a joke, like Hey Ya! (I would like, more than anything else, for my nation to be shaken like a Polaroid picture.)

tiny doesnt just sing these words - he belts them. its like a parade coing out of his mouth. i have no doubt the words travel over lake michigan to most of canada and on to the north pole. the farmers of saskatchewan are crying. santa is turning to mrs. claus and saying what the fuck is that? - will grayson

I couldn’t fight the tide, so Idecided to float along.

“What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity?”

“It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.”

“You know theres no such thing as a complete lie. Theres always some truth in there.”

“He was attractive. I knew that. And I knew that attractive people always got away with things.”

“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.”

“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.”

“...because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then youre doing pretty alright in life.”

“In my kind of falling, there’s no landing. There’s only hitting the ground. Hard. Dead, or wanting to be dead. So the whole time you’re falling, it’s the worst feeling in the world. Because you feel you have no control over it. Because you know how it ends.”

“I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral—these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, “I loved him. We all loved him so much.” I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them.”

“If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. You memories will be my most lasting impressions.”

“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.”

“Love me less,but love me for a long time.”

“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.”

“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 b******* to think of friendship and romance being different. Theyre not. Theyre just variations of the same love. Variatons of the same desire to be close.”