Dash & Lily's Book of Dares Quotes

“It's moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.


I'm told there's no going back. So I’m choosing forward


The exhaustion of living was just too much for me to talk any longer

It still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions

Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? Why do we feel we need that disconnect in order to connect?

I had done it. I had embraced danger. The experience might have been an epic disaster, but it was still…an experience

We are reading the story of our lives/ as though we were in it, /as though we had written it

Like dogs and lions, small children can sense fear. The slightest flinch, the slightest disinclination, and they will jump atop you and devour you

I might have liked to share a dance with you. If I may be so bold to say



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. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle…It’s only a game if there is an absence of meaning. And we’ve already gone too far for that

You restore my faith in humanity

Do you want to go get coffee or something tomorrow and discuss and analyze the situation at length?

Let’s just wander and see what happens

It was rather awkward, insofar as we were both teetering between the possibility of something and the possibility of nothing.

Fate has a strange way of making plans

I love a man who doesn’t let go of the leash, even when it leads him to ruin”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“You made me lose my appetite, Boomer."
"My mom tells me that all the time. Your family must be just like mine!”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“... I love books about freaks," because I am one. You might be, too. Let's be freaks together?”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Teenage boys cannot be trusted. Their intentions are not pure.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“That's because you're interpretting it the wrong way. I don't mean it as a wistful, overdramatic declaration. I meant that the love I felt for him was huge and real, and, while painful, it forever changed me as a person, in the same way that being your brother reflects and changed how I evolve, and vice versa. The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.”
― Rachel Cohn & David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“All this hoping for nothing-or someone-that's maybe hopeless”
― Rachel Cohn & David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“A bum slumped in a corner seat called out, "Give the girl a dance already, ya bum!”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Maybe, I thought, it's not distance that's the problem, but how you handle it."

- Dash”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“It's up to you, not fate.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“He can act a bit loner-ish, but I think he's some serial killer waiting to happen; he's just his own best company sometimes. And he's comfortable with that. I guess there's nothing wrong with that.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“It was rather awkward, insofar as we were both teetering between the possibility of something and the possibility of nothing.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“One of the failures of cellular communication is that tiredness often comes across as sadness.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventive prevarication--in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Although, fanciful's origin circa 1627 made me still love the word, even if I'd ruined its applicability to my connection with Snarl. (I mean DASH!) Like, I could totally see Mrs. Mary Poppencock returning home to her cobblestone hut with the thatched roof in Thamesburyshire, Jolly Olde England, and saying to her husband, "Good sir Bruce, would it not be wonderful to have a roof that doesn't leak when it rains on our green shires, and stuff?" And Sir Bruce Poppencock would have been like, "I say, missus, you're very fanciful with your ideas today." To which Mrs. P. responded, "Why, Master P., you've made up a word! What year is it? I do believe it's circa 1627! Let's carve the year--we think--on a stone so no one forgets. Fanciful! Dear man, you are a genius. I'm so glad my father forced me to marry you and allow you to impregnate me every year.”
― Rachel Cohn & David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Who else would find me at just this moment? First he found me drunk, now he found me cleaning up poo from a barking pony who was about to go into attack mode.”
― Rachel Cohn & David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“It's hard to show you that I tried unless you end up succeeding.”
― Rachel Cohn David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Bad Girl!" She chided.
"I'm pretty sure Boris is a boy," I said.
"Oh, I know," Mrs. Basil E. assured me. "I just like to keep him confused," Then she and Boris headed off with my future.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed...connection?”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Why are there so many people out here?' Boomer asked as we bobbed and weaved roughly forward.
'Christmas shopping.' I explained.
'Already? Isn't it early to returning things?'
I really had no sense of how his mind worked.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“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 princes, but boys want their princesses just as much.”
― Rachel Cohn, David Leviathan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“There was no word in the dictionary adequate to describe the sensation other than sensational.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“It’s up to you, not fate.
True. But it was also up to Lily.
That was the trickiest part.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Hope and belief. I'd always wanted hope, but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it happened.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I don’t think meaning is something that can be explained. You have to understand
hopeful and selectively blind as the next guy, but because I don’t think meaning is something that can be explained. You have to understand
it on your own. It’s like when you’re starting to read. First, you learn the letters. Then, once you know what sounds the letters make, you use them to sound out words. You know that c-a-t leads to cat and d-o-g leads to dog. But then you have to make that extra leap, to understand that the word, the sound, the “cat” is connected to an actual cat, and that “dog” is connected to an actual dog. It’s that leap, that understanding, that leads to meaning. And a lot of the time in life, we’re still just sounding things out. We know the sentences and how to say them. We know the ideas and how to present them. We know the prayers and which words to say in what order. But that’s only spelling.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Prayer or not, I want to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is possible for anyone to find that special person. That person to spend Christmas with or grow old with or just take a nice silly walk in Central Park with”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“But isn’t this a dance? Isn’t all of this a dance? Isn’t that what we do with words? Isn’t that what we do when we talk, when we spar, when we make plans or leave it to chance? Some of it’s choreographed. Some of the steps have been done for ages. And the rest—the rest is spontaneous. The rest has to be decided on the floor, in the moment, before the music ends.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Now when I have to remember a date, all I have to do is consult my rap sheet.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I'm persnickety," I confessed. "Not, incidentally, to the point of being snarly. But still. Delightful and persnickety are not a common blend."
"Do you want to know why I never married?"
"The question wasn't at the top of my list," I admitted.
The old woman made me meet her eye. "Listen to me; I never married because I was easily bored. It's an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It is much better to be too easily interested.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I still felt fondness for her - fondness, that pleasant, detached mix of admiration and sentiment, appreciation and nostalgia.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares