David Levithan > Quotes

“It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date.
It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit.
It just has to be.”
― David Levithan

“You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.”
― David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“I do not say 'good-bye.' I believe that's one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. It's not like you're given the choice to say 'bad-bye' or 'awful-bye' or 'couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye.' Every time you leave, it's supposed to be a good one. Well, I don't believe in that. I believe against that.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“I have a friend request from some stranger on facebook and I delete it without looking at the profile because that doesn't seem natural. 'Cause friendship should not be as easy as that. It's like people believe all you need to do is like the same bands in order to be soulmates. Or books. omg... U like the outsiders 2... it's like we're the same person! No we're not. It's like we have the same English teacher. There's a difference.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“livid, adj.

Fuck You for cheating on me. Fuck you for reducing it to the word cheating. As if this were a card game, and you sneaked a look at my hand. Who came up with the term cheating, anyway? A cheater, I imagine. Someone who thought liar was too harsh. Someone who thought devastator was too emotional. The same person who thought, oops, he’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Fuck you. This isn’t about slipping yourself an extra twenty dollars of Monopoly money. These are our lives. You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here's a hint - ask yourself who wrote them. I assure you, it wasn't just the women. It's the great male fantasy - all it takes is one dance to know that she's the one. All it takes is the sound of her song from the tower, or a look at her sleeping face. And right away you know - this is the girl in your head, sleeping or dancing or singing in front of you. Yes, girls want their princes, but boys want their princesses just as much. And they don't want a very long courtships. They want to know immediately.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Love and I once had a great relationship, but I fear we've broken up. It cheated on me, wrecked my heart, and then went on to date other people. A lot of other people. And I can't stand to watch it, since love's going to cheat on them too.”
― David Levithan

“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“This is why we call people exes, I guess - because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. It's too easy to see an X as a cross-out. It's not, because there's no way to cross out something like that. The X is a diagram of two paths.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“The way you're singing in your sleep
The way you look before you leap
The strange illusions that you keep
You don't know
But I'm noticing

The way your touch turns into arcs
The way you slide into the dark
The beating of my open heart
You don't know
But I'm noticing”
― David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.”
― David Levithan, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“We'd said we'd keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it's gone, it's gone. We should have said we'd keep in words, because they are all we can string between us--words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen.”
― David Levithan

“Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“i will admit there's a certain degree of giving a fuck that goes into not giving a fuck. by saying you don't care if the world falls apart, in some small way you're saying you want it to stay together, on your terms.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“I get it. The things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.”
― David Levithan

“I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable. I particularly loved the adjective bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Here’s what I know about the realm of possibility— it is always expanding, it is never what you think it is. Everything around us was once deemed impossible. From the airplane overhead to the phones in our pockets to the choir girl putting her arm around the metalhead. As hard as it is for us to see sometimes, we all exist within the realm of possibility. Most of the limits are of our own world’s devising. And yet, every day we each do so many things that were once impossible to us. ”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“She's cinematic and I'm a fucking sitcom.”
― David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“You will always be my always.”
― David Levithan

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.”
― David Levithan, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I want to take back at least half of the “I love you”s, because I didn’t mean them as much as the other ones. I want to take back the book of artsy photos I gave you, because you didn’t get it and said it was hipster trash. I want to take back what I said about you being an emotional zombie. I want to take back the time I called you “honey” in front of your sister and you looked like I had just shown her pictures of us having sex. I want to take back the wineglass I broke when I was mad, because it was a nice wineglass and the argument would have ended anyway. I want to take back the time we had sex in a rent-a-car, not because I feel bad about the people who got in the car after us, but because it was massively uncomfortable. I want to take back the trust I had while you were away in Austin. I want to take back the time I said you were a genius, because I was being sarcastic and I should have just said you’d hurt my feelings. I want to take back the secrets I told you so I can decide now whether to tell them to you again. I want to take back the piece of me that lies in you, to see if I truly miss it. I want to take back at least half the “I love you”s, because it feels safer that way.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore.”
― David Levithan, Boy Meets Boy

“That's what the voices in your head are for, to get you through the silent parts.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“Because the song is us and the song is her and this time I’m going to use her name. Norah, Norah, Norah - no rhymes really. Just truth.

I shouldn’t want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I’m seeing we don’t live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It’s an infinite playlist.”
― David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“I think one of the highest compliments you can give a person is that when you are talking to him, you are not thinking about the fact that you are talking to him. That is, your thoughts and words all exist on a single, engaged level. You are being yourself because you aren't bothering to think about who you should be. It is like when you talk in a dream.”
― David Levithan, How They Met, and Other Stories

“Getting what you want is just as difficult as not getting what you want. Because then you have to figure out what to do with it instead of figuring out what to do without it. ”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“I close my eyes. And i scream. If my whole world is crashing down around me, then I am going to make the sound of the crashing. I want to scream until all my bones break.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“I mean, what if love isn't a yes-or-no question? It's not either you're in love or you're not. I mean, aren't there different levels? And maybe these things, like words and expectations and whatever, don't go on top of the love. Maybe it's like a map, and they all have their own place, and then when you see it from the sky - whoa.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I have no idea how he knows when I need him. We can go weeks without speaking, and then, when my blue moods threaten to turn black, he will show up and tell me my moods are
azure
indigo
cerulean
cobalt
periwinkle
and suddenly the blue will not seem so dark, more like the color of a noon-bright sky.
He brings the sun.”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“An unarticulated crush is very different from an unrequited one, because at least with an unrequited crush you know what the hell you're doing, even if the other person isn't doing it back. An unarticulated crush is harder to grapple with, because it's a crush that you haven't even admitted to yourself. The romantic forces are all there -- you want to see him, you always notice him, you treat every word from him as if it weighs more than anyone else's. But you don't know why. You don't know that you're doing it. You'd follow him to the end of the earth without ever admitting that your feet were moving.”
― David Levithan, Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd

“Singing in the rain. I'm singing in the rain. And it's such a fucking glorious feeling. An unexpected downpour and I am just giving myself into it. Because what the fuck else can you do? Run for cover? Shriek and curse? No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it because if you can make yourself happy in the rain, then you're doing pretty alright in life.”
― David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“Being a bitch is easy. It's finding the alternative that's hard.”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“A year. A thousand kisses. And now a thousand one, a thousand two. There are so many other place we could have ended up, but I have to believe
none of them would have felt this right. "All I want is you" is not entirely true. I want so much more, and with you I think I can get it.”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“Maybe that's it, [...] [w]ith what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn't that we're supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we're the pieces." [...] "Maybe [...] what we're supposed to do is come together. That's how we stop the breaking.”
― David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“abstraction, n.

Love is one kind of abstraction. And then there are those nights when I sleep alone, when I curl into a pillow that isn't you, when I hear the tiptoe sounds that aren't yours. It's not as if I can conjure you up completely. I must embrace the idea of you instead.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“Singing in the rain. I'm singing in the rain. And it's such a fucking glorious feeling.”
― David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“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, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“Just because a person is beautiful doesn't mean there's no soul beneath. Doesn't mean that person hasn't suffered like everyone else, doesn't mean they don't hope to still be a good human being in an awful world.”
― David Levithan, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“You have to believe there are kisses and laughs and risks worth taking.”
― David Levithan, How They Met, and Other Stories

“The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“I want my own books to have their own shelves," you said, and that's how I knew it would be okay to live together.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary