Quotes from David Levithan

If I'd managed any of these ifs-- would I have been able to avoid the inevitable fuck-up, the full-force fuck-off? My pride shut me up, my heart shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.

This is the power of a kiss: It does not have the power to kill you. But it has the power to bring you to life.

Family, like arsenic, works best in small doses...unless you prefer to die.

I will be the one to leave you.

Holden Caulfield is the embodiment of what we mean by the phrase "young adult" – too young to be a grown-up, but too wise to the world to be completely innocent. He's caught in the in-between, and that in-between is what all young adult authors write about.

Don't get trapped into thinking people are halves instead of wholes.

You are so close, and I can't reach you.

Here, she said. This is for you. I didn't really get you anything, I sputtered. I mean, I didn't know that you were going to be here, and-- Don't worry. It's your embarrassment at not having the thought that counts.

We are so used to releasing words. We don't know what to do with them if they stay.

She is no longer a person in his life; instead, she is a person that other people will remind him of.

So there we were. Once upon a time, during the storybook version of dating we'd gone through, I'd pretended that it was possible to love her when I only mildly liked her. Now I had no desire to pretend we'd ever be in love, and I liked her madly. 'Can we try to be wise with each other for a very long time?' I asked her. She laughed. 'You mean, can we share our fuckups and see if we can get any wisdom out of them?' 'Yeah,' I said. 'That would be nice.

That whole week, we started to divide things into those two categories: anything or something. A piece of jewelry bougth at a department store: anything. A piece of jewelry made by hand: something. A dollar: anything. A sand dollar: something. A gift certificate: anything. An IOU for two hours of starwatching: something. A drunk kiss at a party: anything. A sober kiss alone in a park: something.

Measure the hope of that moment, that feeling. Everything else will be measured against it.

No funny stuff in here tonight, you understand?" Dash said, "I assure you I could not contemplate any of your so-called funny stuff seeing as how I have no idea why I'm even here." Mark scoffed. "You bookish little pervert." "Thank you, sir!" Dash said brightly.

I don't like to do what people expect. Why should I live up to their expectations instead of my own?

I am here, and he is here, and everything I need to know is that I will hold him and he will hold me until I am warm again, until I know I belong. (Your Temporary Santa)

I have always found peace among books.

every morning i pray that the school bus will crash and we'll all die in a fiery wreck. then my mom will be able to sue the school bus company for never making school buses with seat belts, and she'll be able to get more money for my tragic death than i would've ever made in my tragic life. unless the lawyers from the school bus company can prove to the jury that i was guaranteed to be a fuckup. then they'd get away with buying my mom a used ford fiesta and call it even.

I have to tell you, man, that my stalker meter is kind of registering in the red zone right now.

This is a difference between us: you desire what other people have, while I desire the things I used to have, or think I might have one day.

If you zoom close-if you get really close to someone, if you really get close to yourself-then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore.

He is much stronger than I think I am. He is mischievous, outgoing, ready to soar through the clouds, while I often feel like the cloud itself.

having someone think of me that way was like discovering a new window in the room i'd lived in all my life.

There are few things harder than being born into the wrong body.