Wide Awake Quotes

“I am proud that I defy your categories. I am proud that I don't fit easily into any box. I am proud of all the things I am and all the things i can be. Question yourself every time you think you only see one thing in me.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“It was the most amazing feeling in the world. to know that something right happened, and to know that it had happened not through luck or command but simply because it was right.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“We are not taught "love thy neighbor unless their skin is a different color from yours " or "love thy neighbor unless they don't make money as you do" or "love thy neighbor unless they don't share your belies." We are taught "love thy neighbor". No exceptions. We are all in this together - every single one of us. And the only way we are going to survive as a society is through compassion. A Great Community does not mean we all think the same things or do the same things. It simply means we are willing to work together and are willing to love despite our differences.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“You don't realize - the great thing about change is how quickly we get used to it. So I'm not complaining. the more things change,the more they don't stay the same. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. They might not change everywhere all at once - but there are moments when the impossible becomes the inevitable, and the rest is just a matter of time.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“For the Jesus Revolutionaries, the answer was clear: Jesus would not be out waging "preventative" wars. Jesus would not be withholding medicine from people who could not afford it. Jesus would not cast stones at people of races, sexual orientatons, or genders other than His own. Jesus would not condone the failing, viperous, scandalplagued hierarchy of some churches. Jesus would welcome everyone to his his table. He would love them, and he would find peace.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“It felt good to be surrounded by books, by all this solid knowledge, by these objects that could be ripped page by page but couldn't be torn if the pages all held together.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular - but one must take it because it is right.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“Do not just seek happiness for yourself. Seek happiness for all. Through kindness. Through mercy.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“The more kindness and justice are challenged, the more we must embrace them. Only when you are challenged - and only when you challenge yourself - do you discover what truly matters.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“There are times I think of us all and I wish we were back in second grade. Not really that young. But I wish it felt like second grade. I’m not saying everyone was friends back then. But we all got along. There were groups, but they didn’t really divide. At the end of the day, your class was your class, and you felt like you were a part of it. You had your friends and you had the other kids, but you didn’t really hate anyone longer than a couple of hours. Everybody got a birthday card. In second grade, we were all in it together. Now we’re all apart.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“I just needed to realize that style was like personality - it didn't always have to be consistent; it just had to be something you lived with.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“When it all come down to it, the thing that matters most in a relationship is principles [...] We have the same idea what’s right and what’s wrong, and that’s got us through any number of things. If you can have that with someone, then you’re most of the way toward love. Not just lover-love. Any kind of love.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“Maybe that's what history is, you go from one I can't believe it the next. And sometimes the I can't believe its are good, and sometimes they're bad. But the sum total of positive ones always outweighs the negative ones.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“The houses have been condemned on Memory Lane
I’m tired of this struggle that leaves everything the same
I’ve tried so hard to make it work
that I’m dying inside
Well, you can take my past
But you can’t have my tomorrow

Promises that remain promises are useless and they’re cheap
I wish I could put a price on words so I could make them keep
I put so much faith in you
I lost all my faith in me
Well, you can take my past
But you can’t have my tomorrow

I’m giving up on giving up
I can’t leave it all to prayer
‘Cause the first step in getting better
is knowing what’s not there
You said you’d make it better
and that just makes it worse
Well, you can take my past
But you can’t have my tomorrow

Yes, I want my life to last
So you can’t have my tomorrow
No, you can’t have my tomorrow”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“She still dotted her i’s with full circles and felt genuinely thankful for every sunny day. I believed more in dark clouds, in sharp dots, in needing proof in order to feel trust.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“We vote every time we make a choice. We vote with our lives.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“Long live protest songs, in whatever form they take.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America--the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians--none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen--either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide--and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it--all of it--seems to have led me to where we are, here and now.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“I don't know what good I could do."
"None of us does. That doesn't let us off the hook.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“I'd always hated the word realistic. Or, more truthfully, I'd always hated the way people used the word realistic - as if it were a limitation, as if reality were something that conformed so severely to likelihood that surprising things could never, ever happen. From what I'd seen, reality was much more complicated than that. Sometimes it was remarkably predictable, but a lot of the time it didn't go the way anybody would expect. I didn't believe in using probabilities to rule out possibilities.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“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.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“I hope they don't think we're leaving. I want to tell them we're coming back. And that we're not going to hell. I mean, who are they to say? It's one thing to warn someone out of concern. It's another to take it upon yourself to make the damnation. The last time I checked, it was the Lord's call whether or not we go to hell. I hope whenever a person tells another person he or she is going to hell that the Lord notices and decides to hold it against the hell-caller when his or her day of judgement comes. I hope heor she gets up to the gates and the Lord says, 'It was so easy for you to send people to hell in My name that I'm afraid it's going to be easy for Me to do the same.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“I prayed last night, too,' she said to me, glaring at Mary Catherina's direction. 'I prayed for a good long time to God to do the right thing in Kansas. That's all I said--the right thing. And I guess that's the difference between Mary Catherine and me: I don't feel I need to tell the Lord what the right thing is. I have faith the Lord knows.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“Everything--the section of comfortable chairs in the middle, the long colourful chains that dangled lights from the ceiling--seemed designed to make you feel like you were part of something larger, without actually being made to feel small.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“I was always thinking in terms of too much or not enough, rarely allowing myself that crucial space in between. Except when he was around. Except when we were really together. Then I could forget—I couldn’t turn it off, but I could forget to turn it on. Gradually, the columns began to tip. I lost track of keeping track. In order to let us be, I let myself be.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“There is no such thing as equality for some. Equality must be for all. That is what freedom is. That is what liberty is. No human being is born more or less important than any other. How can we allow ourselves to forget that? What simpler truth is there?”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“It felt good to be surrounded by books, by all this solid knowledge, by these objects that could be ripped page by page but couldn't be torn if the pages all held together. So much of the information we received was ephemeral -- pixels on screen, words passing in the air. But here I felt that thoughts had weight.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“Calling someone a loser is a way of saying I've won without having to actually win anything.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake

“We say: Anything is possible. But, what we mean is: I hope good is possible.”
― David Levithan, Wide Awake