Quotes from David Levithan

I am like the people in the Winslow Homer paintings, sharing the same room with them but not really there. I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that's not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood.

Breath and heat and contact and shirts off and skin on skin and smiles and murmurs and the enormity revealing itself in the tiniest of gestures, the most delicate sensations.

i want to say to her: i just want to be myself. and i want to be with someone who's just himself. that's all. i want to see through all the performance and all the pretending and get right to the truth.

reservation, n. There are times when I worry that I've already lost myself. That is, that my self is so inseparable from being with you that if we were to separate, I would no longer be. I save this thought for when I feel the darkest discontent. I never meant to depend so much on someone else.

It's exhausting, trying to make a bad person act good. You can see why it's so much easier for them to be bad.

In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole.

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.

Infinite Darlene doesn't have it easy. Being both star quarterback and homecoming queen has its conflicts.

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

Picture me however you want to picture me. Because odds are that'll be more true than any of the bodies you see me in.

The first time the three of us went to the movies together, he waited until you went to get popcorn, and then he said, You don't mind, do you? And I'd been so moved that he'd asked, that he wanted my permission.

I stole Judy Blume's 'Forever' from my sister when I was eight,' I say. 'I figured if it was by the author of 'Superfudge', it had to be good. Well, I soon realized why she kept it under her bed. I'm not sure I understood it all, but I thought it was unfair that the boy would name his, um, organ, and the girl wouldn't name hers. So I decided to give mine a name.' Rhiannon is laughing. What was its name?' Helena. I introduced everyone to her at dinner that night. It went over really well.

Brothers are not like sisters.

Infinity is against us, I told him. There's no way for us ever to count it or control it or understand it.

I am an adjective that is quickly turning into a noun.

There were days I felt like a girl and days I felt like a boy, and those days wouldn't always correspond with the body I was in. I still believed everyone when they said I had to be one or the other. Nobody was telling me a different story, and I was too young to think for myself. I had yet to learn that when it came to gender, I was both and neither.

That was easy compared to this. It's one thing to fall in love. It's another to feel someone else falling in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.

Life fails. Songs don't always.

and at first i didn't really know jed was although i was sure he knew that i was but gradually we both knew and we knew.

When everybody knows you, it is easy to think that nobody will ever really know you.

Don't let them get to you,' the pastor told us. 'All they have is hate, and in the end hate is worthless. They want for us to become hateful, too, and to forfeit His love in our anger. When faced with such hate, we can only embrace love tighter. As Paul said, 'Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

You shouldn't have to venture deep down in order to get to love -A (Nathan)

The laws of gravity vary from city to city. In Venice, the laws state that no matter where you want to go, you will always be drawn back to ST. Mark's Square. Even though you know it will be immensely crowded, and even though you have nothing in particular to do there, you will still feel yourself drawn.

transient, adj. In school, the year was the marker. Fifth grade. Senior year of high school. Sophomore year of college. Then after, the jobs were the marker. That office, this desk. But now that school is over and I've been working at the same desk for longer than I can truly believe, I realize: You have become the marker. This is your era. And it's only if it goes on and on that I will have to look for other ways to identify the time.