Quotes from David Levithan

And I told you: I think of a photograph you took of me, up in Montreal. You told me to jump in the air, so in the picture, my feet are off the ground. Later, I asked you why you wanted me to do that, and you told me it was the only way to get me to forget about the expression on my face. You were right. I am completely unposed, completely genuine. In my mind's eye, I picture myself like that, reacting to you.

I couldn't remember ordinary moments, only the ones that had made an impression. Ordinary moments were the ones that fell away first.

I am learning that a life isn't real unless someone else knows its reality. And I want my life to be real.

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.

That's the question, isn't it? you said one night. Does death bring freedom, or is it the end of freedom?

Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.

The fewer connections you have to the world, the easier it is to leave.

I find myself looking into people's eyes more than I ever did before. And I realize, that's where we stop being a certain gender or color. Just look right into the center of the eye.

I'm swimming in your cadences that you permeate my very language.

I couldn't fault her for believing, because I had to imagine i was nice to have that illusion still intact.

Sorry to be so cynical, but this is New York

But I still has enough longing for that concept that I didn't want to dispel it completely. Meaning: I didn't want to tell Lily that I felt we'd all been duped by Plato and the idea of a soul mate. Just in case it turned out that she was mine.

Fate has a strange way of making plans.

I don't want to throw everything away for something uncertain.

You haven't missed me for one fucking minute. You have never for one single second in your entire pathetic fucking life missed me. You might have missed fucking with my head, and you might have missed the satisfaction you so clearly got from demolishing me, but those are your emotions you're missing, not mine. I'm afraid I can't help you.

And as we drift into sleep, I feel something I've never felt before. A closeness that isn't merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that we've only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging.

and suddenly you started singing out your love for me. My name and everything, loud enough to reach the top floors of all the buildings. I should have told you to stop, but I didn't want you to stop. I didn't mind if your love for me woke people up. I didn't mind if it somehow sneaked into their sleep.

So many of us had to make our own families. So many of us had to pretend when we were home. So many of us had to leave. But every single one of us wishes we hadn't had to. Every single one of us wishes our family had acted like our family, that even when we found a new family, we hadn't had to leave the other one behind. Every single one of us would have loved to have been loved unconditionally by our parents.

Beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain.

yarn, n. Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once. Knit me a sweater out of your best stories. Not the day's petty injustices. Not the glimmer of a seven-eights-forgotten moment from your past. Not something that somebody said to somebody, who then told it to you. No, I want a yarn. It doesn't have to be true.

I text tiny a minute later. MADE NEW GAY FRIEND. And he texts back PROGRESS!!!

We stay this way until twilight colours the window and the hour calls me home

But I think we were walking around like we were invincible. And maybe that's a bad way to live your life. Because you're not invincible. Nobody is. And maybe now that we've learned that, we'll be better.

That strange, twisted, torn love. That conflict between what your heart knows is right and what your mind is told is right.