David Levithan Quotes - Page 2

Stupid arbitrary shit means it will take a movie star to die and a hemophiliac teenager to die before ordinary people start to mobilize, start to feel that the disease needs to be stopped. Tens of thousands of people will die before drugs are made and drugs are approved. What a horrible feeling that is, to know that if the disease had primarily affected PTA presidents, or priests, or white teenage girls, the epidemic would have been ended years earlier, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lives would have been saved
David Levithan
People like to say being gay isn't like skin color, isn't anything physical. They tell us we always have the option of hiding.But if that's true, why do they always find us?
David Levithan
It was so screwed up, because the thing that made us the most powerless also gave us such power. We could make them turn away. We could bother them and challenge them and mess them up. You think people are afraid of two boys in love? To hell with that. What people are really afraid of is two boys screwing.
David Levithan
If you put enough closets together, you have enough space for a room. If you put enough rooms together, you have enough room for a house. If you put enough houses together, you have space for a town, then a city, then a nation, then a world.
David Levithan
If you put enough closets together, you have enough space for a room. If you put enough rooms together, you have enough space for a house. If you put enough houses together, you have space for a town, then a city, then a nation, then a world.
David Levithan
I think they would like the songs betterif I left out the names, or changedthe pronouns.
David Levithan
I had yet to learn that when it came to gender, I was both and neither.
David Levithan
Pink is female - but why? Are girls any more pink than boys? Are boys any more blue than girls? It's something that has been sold to us, mostly so other things can be sold to us.
David Levithan
Even though you're not my type, gender wise, you're certainly my type, person-wise.
David Levithan
Most dancers find their confidence in dancing. Right is mere millimeters away from wrong. Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don’t do wrong, and it becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where confidence lasts longer than the dance. Seconds at first. Then minutes. Then maybe it’ll be there when you’re walking into a party, or meeting people after a show. You know you have something desirable, and you know you can move.
David Levithan
Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don’t do wrong, and that becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where that confidence lasts longer than the dance. Seconds at first. Then minutes. Then maybe it’ll be there when you’re walking into a party, or meeting people after a show. You know you have something desirable, and you know you can move.
David Levithan
When you dance, you measure distance as if it’s a solid thing; you make precise judgments every time two bodies exist in relation to each other. So I knew right away the definition of the space between us.
David Levithan
tiny: did someone die?me: yeah, i did.he smiles again at that.tiny: well, then... welcome to the afterlife.
David Levithan
i think the idea of a 'mental health day' is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it's like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'i don't want to deal with things today' and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide.
David Levithan
The devil doesn't make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.
David Levithan
Ultimately, the universe doesn't care about us. Time doesn't care about us. That's why we have to care about each other.
David Levithan
Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.
David Levithan
I don't like to do what people expect. Why should I live up to their expectations instead of my own?
David Levithan
it's colder than a witch's tit in a steel bra
David Levithan
Look, look, we tell each other. It's Tom!He's Mr. Bellamy to his history students. But he's Tom to us. Tom! It's so good to see him. So wonderful to see him. Tom is one of us. Tom went through it all with us. Tom made it through. He was there in the hospital with so many of us, the archangel of St. Vincent's, our healthier version, prodding the doctors and calling over the nurses and holding our hands and holding the hands of our partners, our parents, our little sisters - anyone who had a hand to be held. He had to watch so many of us die, had to say goodbye so many times. Outside of our rooms he would get angry, upset, despairing. But when he was with us, it was like he was powered solely by an engine of grace. Even the people who loved us would hesitate at first to touch us - more from the shock of our diminishment, from the strangeness of how we were both gone and present, not who we were but still who we were. Tom became used to this. First because of Dennis, the way he stayed with Dennis until the very end. He could have left after that, after Dennis was gone. We wouldn't have blamed him. But he stayed. When his friends got sick, he was there. And for those of us he'd never know before - he was always a smile in the room, always a touch on the shoulder, a light flirtation that we needed. The y should have made him a nurse. They should have made him mayor. He lost years of his life to us, although that's not the story he'd tell. He would say he gained. And he'd say he was lucky, because when he came down with it, when his blood turned against him, it was a little later on and the cocktail was starting to work. So he lived. He made it to a different kind of after from the rest of us. It is still an after. Every day if feel to him like an after. But he is here. He is living.A history teacher. An out, outspoken history teacher. The kind of history teacher we never would have had. But this is what losing most of your friends does: It makes you unafraid. Whatever anyone threatens, whatever anyone is offended by, it doesn't matter, because you have already survived much, much worse. In fact, you are still surviving. You survive every single, blessed day.It makes sense for Tom to be here. It wouldn't be the same without him.And it makes sense for him to have taken the hardest shift. The night watch.Mr. Nichol passes him the stopwatch. Tom walks over and says hello to Harry and Craig. He's been watching the feed, but it's even more powerful to see these boys in person. He gestures to them, like a rabbi or a priest offering a benediction."Keep going," he says. "You're doing great."Mrs. Archer, Harry's next-door neighbor, has brought over coffee, and offers Tom a cup. He takes it gratefully.He wants to be wide awake for all of this.Every now and then he looks to the sky.
David Levithan
My lines all curve. I tend to connect the wrong dots.
David Levithan
I just mean that if we go through this thing and it changes us so much, you have to hope that it changes us for the better, right? If goodness can’t come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.
David Levithan
yearning n. and adj.At te core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.
David Levithan
I once told him that the best way to break up a fight is to step between the two people and start singing ancient folk songs. But I’d never heard of anyone actually doing such a thing.
David Levithan
Just when we stopped wanting to kill ourselves, we started to die.
David Levithan
Jest when we stopped wanting to kill ourselves, we started to die.
David Levithan
I’ve always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate as much as I thought she should that she got to be her. She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me.
David Levithan
The body is the easiest thing to adjust to... It’s the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.
David Levithan
Doubt is an acceptable risk for happiness.
David Levithan
One of the protestor's sign catches my eye. HOMISEXUALITY IS THE DEVIL'S WORK, it says. And once again I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn't make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.
David Levithan
exemplar, n.It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath.
David Levithan
Some of our parents were always on our side. Some of our parents chose to banish us rather than see us for who we were. And some of our parents, when they found out we were sick, stopped being dragons and became dragonslayers instead. Sometimes that’s what it takes—the final battle. But it should take much, much less than that.
David Levithan
It’s been said of me that I know how to love well, if any person alive can possess such knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us.It is all such a blessing—in the beginning, and the end, and the during.
David Levithan
teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say "I wish someone would drop a bomb on this school right now," that means they have arranged for a nuclear arsenal to be emptied onto the school and should be immediately suspended and ridiculed. if they say they were merely coming up with a joking excuse to postpone a bio test, reply that all jokes are funny, and that since dropping a bomb on a school is not funny, it is therefore not a joke.
David Levithan
With all due respect, if you’re forty-three, then I’m a fetus.
David Levithan
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.
David Levithan
i am like a dead begoniahanging upside down because like a dead begonia I don't give a fuck
David Levithan
Really, weren't these facts just placeholders until the long view could really assert itself?
David Levithan
You can find sorrow in the arithmetic, and you can find a bittersweet hope.
David Levithan
I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.
David Levithan
Enlightenment is scary. Sometimes things look better in the dark.
David Levithan
They should be going to sleep, but good company is the enemy of sleep.
David Levithan
elliptical, adj.The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It’s as much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it happen.
David Levithan
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.
David Levithan
The promise of a kiss will carry us forward.
David Levithan
it's like kissing a boy, finally, a boy
David Levithan
The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It's as much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it happen.
David Levithan
He kisses me back with a kiss like a smile.
David Levithan
Her mind is an unquiet one, words and thoughts and impulses constantly crashing into each other.
David Levithan
We stay this way until twilight colours the window and the hour calls me home
David Levithan
Your Temporary Santa, "He says presents aren't important, but I think they are- not because of how much they cost, but for the opportunity they provide to say 'I understand you.
David Levithan
You really think love needs to have a future?”“Absolutely.”“Good,” Lily said. “So do I.”“Good,” I echoed, leaning in. “So do you.”“Don’t repeat what I say,” she told me, swatting at my arm.“Don’t repeat what I say,” I murmured, smiling.“You’re being silly,” she said, but the silliness was falling out of her voice.“You’re being silly,” I assured her.“Lily is the greatest girl who ever was.”I drew closer. “Lily is the greatest girl who ever was.”For a moment, I think we’d forgotten where we were.And then the officers returned, and we were reminded once again.
David Levithan
The past and future are what’s complicated. It’s the present that’s simple.
David Levithan
isaac knows how stupid i find these things, and he finds them just as stupid as i do. like lol. now, if there's anything stupider than buddy lists, it's lol. if anyone ever uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it's not like anyone's laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person's tongue does. loll. loll. i can't think any more. loll. loll!
David Levithan
I showed him the Post-it. “You see They’re from Lily.”“Who’s Lily?”“Some girl.”“Ooh... a girl!”“Boomer, we’re not in third grade anymore. You don’t say, ‘Ooh... a girl!’”“What? You fucking her?”“Okay, Boomer, you’re right. I liked ‘Ooh... a girl!’ much more than that. Let’s stick with ‘Ooh... a girl!
David Levithan
They wouldn't beat him up. They wouldn't break his ribs. He knew that. But they had other ways of breaking him - with silence, with disappointment, with disapproval.
David Levithan
He plants himself right there in front of Craig’s mother and says, “You need to love him. I don’t care who you thought he was, or who you want him to be, you need to love him exactly as he is because your son is a remarkable human being. You have to understand that.”And Craig’s mother whispers back, “I know. I know.
David Levithan
It's Miranda who speaks up. "You're gay," she says, with complete seriousness. "And I love you.
David Levithan
So what’s your story?” Ryan asks.Avery looks up at him, hand still in the water. “My story?”“Yeah. Everybody has at least one.
David Levithan
Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends—an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels—and it is that—comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there.
David Levithan