Quotes by David Levithan

its not his bodythat changesright away.its somethinginside. he sayshe wants tobe a littleweaker. i dontunderstand.i say thinner?and he saysno, i wantto be strongerin a differentway. notbecause of me,but for me.

Its hard to think of such things when you are busy dreaming or loving or screwing. The context falls away.

Some people are given relatively fair lives. But others-they carry the burden of the unfairness of the world.

When you need to hold onto something, you should. Whatever gets you through, take it.

New Yorkers love the bigness -- the skyscrapers, the freedom, the lights. But they also love it when they can carve out some smallness for themselves. When the guy at the corner store knows which newspaper you want. When the barista has your order ready before you open your mouth. When you start to recognize the people in your orbit, and you know that, say, if youre waiting for the subway at eight fifteen on the dot, odds are the redhead with the red umbrella is going to be there too.

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. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.

No, really, I said. I think shes great. And I honestly like her about twenty more times now than I did when we were dating. But love needs to have a future. And Sofia and I dont have a future. Weve just had a good time sharing the present, thats all.

The past and future are whats complicated. Its the present thats simple.

What a wonderful word, future. Of all the abstractions we can articulate to ourselves, of all the concepts we have that other animals do not, how extraordinary the ability to consider a time thats never been experienced. And how tragic not to consider it. It galls us, we with such a limited future, to see someone brush it aside as meaningless, when it has an endless capacity for meaning, and an endless number of meanings that can be found within it.

This is what a small victory feels like. It feels like a little surprise and a lot of relief. It makes the past feel lighter and the future seem even lighter than that, if only for a moment. It feels like rightness winning. It feels like possibility.

He was thirteen then, Elijah almost seven. Now, ten years later, Elijah realizes he’s older than Danny was. That all of those changes have happened to him, too. The changes that nobody has any say over. The biology—“growing” and “up” as a physical matter. The changes after—Elijah has to believe they’re a matter of choice. Looking at Danny used to be like looking at the future. Now looking at Danny is like looking at a future he doesn’t want.

You cant know what it is like for us now--you will always be one step behind.Be thankful for that.You cant know what it was like for us then--you will always be one step ahead.Be thankful for that, too.

Our friendship is made of bendy straws, long midnight letters,my so-called life marathons, sleepless sleepovers, diner milk shakes, apron strings, a belief in beauty,sucking helium, and the most trust I’ve ever felt for anyone, including myself.

I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We dont have the words for it, since we hadnt yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.

The sound of the words as theyre said is always different from the sound they make when theyre heard, because the speaker hears some of the sound from the inside

The sound of words as theyre said is always different from the sound they make when theyre heard, because the speakers hears some of the sound from the inside.

I want to say more, but dont know what the words are supposed to be. I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable night-time conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when theres no light in the room.

I want to say more, but dont know what the words are supposed to be. I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable night time conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when theres no room in the air.

Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over.I know how wrong this is.When I was a child, I didnt understand. I would wake up in a new body and wouldnt comprehend why things felt muted, dimmer. Or the opposite--Id be supercharged, unfocused, like a radio at top volume flipping quickly from station to station. Since I didnt have access to the bodys emotions, I assumed the ones I was feeling were my own. Eventually, though, I realized these inclinations, these compulsions, were as much a part of the body as its eye color or its voice. Yes, the feelings themselves were intangible, amorphous, but the cause of the feelings was a matter of chemistry, biology.It is a hard cycle to conquer. The body is working against you. And because of this, you feel even more despair. Which only amplifies the imbalance. It takes uncommon strength to live with these things. But I have seen that strength over and over again.

tiny: but there is the word, this word phil wrayson taught me once: weltschmerz. its the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be. i live in a big goddamned weltzschermz ocean, you know? and so do you.