Quotes from David Levithan

If you're not able to laugh inside a sex shop, then you probably shouldn't be there. I mean, they don't call it fooling around for nothing.

The beliefs are almost always the same; it's just that the histories are different. Everybody wants to believe in a higher power. Everybody wants to belong to something bigger than themselves, and everybody wants company in doing that. They want there to be a force of good on earth, and they want an incentive to be a part of that force. They want to be able to prove their belief and their belonging, through rituals and devotion. They want to touch the enormity.

It is hard to stop seeing your parents as parents and to start seeing them as human beings. It's a two-sided transition, and very few people manage it gracefully.

We listen to songs to figure them out, to unravel the mystery of the words and the tune.

is that what relationships become? A reduced version of the hurt, nothing else let in.

Craig can't bear it. He opens his eyes, looks over to Tariq, who has tears in his own eyes. He mimes writing. Tariq scrambles for a marker and some paper. He runs over to Craig. All the things Craig has to say boil down to the essential... I'M GAY, MOM. I'M GAY. Craig rotates his and Harry's bodies so he's facing his mother. Then he holds up his shaky sign. He sees her eyes as she understands it.

Normal people don't have to decide what's worth remembering. You are given a hierarchy, recurring characters, the help of repetition, of anticipation, the firm hold of a long history.

There has to be a moment at the beginning when you wonder whether you're in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself.

People take love's continuity for granted, just as they take their body's continuity for granted. They don't realize that the best thing about love is its regular presence. Once you can establish that, it's an added foundation to your life. But if you cannot have that regular presence, you only have the one foundation to support you, always

Sometimes beauty is best when it's distant.

His features are attractive, but what he does with them is not.

Being with someone for over a year can mean that you love them...but it can also mean you're trapped.[...] There are many things that can keep you in a relationship.[...] Fear of being alone. Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life. A decision to settle for something that's okay, because you don't know if you can get any better. Or maybe there's the irrational belief that it will get better, even if you know he won't change.

People take love's continuity for granted, just as they take their body's continuity for granted.

I have been in the bodies of starvers and purgers, gluttons and addicts. They all think their actions make their lives more desirable. But the body always defeats them in the end.

I don't understand this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired. In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don't understand why it's so hard, when it's so obvious.

when you love someone, they become your reason.

We roll down the windows and crank the radio - we like the idea of our music spilling out over the whole neighbourhood, becoming part of the air.

I recounted. I rechecked. Are you going to cock?

We were over and I wasn't over it.

rofl! what? are you really rolling on the floor laughing? well, please stay down there a sec while I KICK YOUR ASS.)

The beliefs are almost always the same; it's just that the histories are different. Everybody wants to believe in a higher power. Everybody wants to belong to something bigger than themselves, and everybody wants company in doing that.

There's much protest, but it falls on deaf ears.

The reason I couldn't talk to you was because I felt so bad for not talking to you.

I don't have the heart to tell him that's the wrong way to think about the world. There will always be more questions Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go.