David Levithan Quotes

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

“She has been hanging on to the hope of him for so long that she doesn't realize there isn't anything left to hope for.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“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

“Also, I feel that crying is almost--like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever-- totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1.Don't care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“We are so used to releasing words, we don't know what to do with them if they stay. No matter how many times we let them go, they come back. The words that matter always stay.”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“It was so much easier when I didn't want anything. Not getting what you want can make you cruel.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“Self-preservation isn't worth it if you can't live with the self you're preserving”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“You can trust that caring, as a rule, ends poorly,” which is true. Caring doesn’t sometimes lead to misery. It always does.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“Now she’s lit by the warm orange spreading from the horizon as not-quite-day, becomes not-quite-night”
― David Levithan , Every Day

“If I don't shut down my brain soon, my imagination will take off so far about what could be with this guy, that nothing will ever just be.-- Norah, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist”
― Rachel Cohn, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“here’s the sick, twisted thing: part of me thinks i deserve this. that maybe if i wasn’t such an asshole, isaac would have been real. if i wasn’t such a lame excuse for a person, something right might happen to me. it’s not fair, because i didn’t ask for dad to leave, and i didn’t ask to be depressed, and i didn’t ask for us to have no money, and i didn’t ask to want to fuck boys, and i didn’t ask to be so stupid, and i didn’t ask to have no real friends, and i didn’t ask to have half the shit that comes out of my mouth come out of my mouth. all i wanted was one fucking break, one idiotic good thing, and that was clearly too much to ask for, too much to want.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“I thought about the word 'profile' and what a weird double meaning it had. We say we're looking at a person's profile online, or say a newspaper is writing a profile on someone, and we assume it's the whole them we're seeing. But when a photographer takes a picture of a profile, you're only seeing half the face... It's never the way you would remember seeing them. You never remember someone 'in profile.' You remember them looking you in the eye, or talking to you. You remember an image that the subject could never see in a mirror, because you are the mirror. A profile, photographically, is perpendicular to the person you know.”
― David Levithan, Every You, Every Me

“The spot was empty. Empty but not void. Void is when there is absolutely nothing there and the nothing is natural, a complete vacuum. But empty-with empty, you are aware of what's supposed to be there. Empty means something is missing.”
― David Levithan

“i have no idea what truth has to do with love, and vice versa. i’m not even thinking in terms of love here. it’s way, way, way early for that. but i guess i am thinking in terms of truth. i want this to be truthful. and even as i protest to tiny and i protest to myself, the truth is becoming increasingly clear. it’s time for us to figure out how the hell this is ever going to work.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“He’s a fuckup, but he’s my fuckup,” and I thought, Oh, shit, I really shouldn’t be relating to this, but I am, and so what? That has to be what love is—seeing what a mess he is and loving him anyway, because you know you’re a mess, too, maybe even worse.”
― David Levithan, Another Day

“I'd pick you, I say. Fuck it, I do pick you. I want you to come over to my house in twenty years with your dud and your adopted kids and I want our fucking kids to hang out and I want to, like, drink wine and talk about the Middle East or whatever the fuck we're gonna want to do when we're old. We've been friends too long to pick, but if we could pick, I'd pick you.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“why do you have to fix the salad? who broke it? i didn't touch it. did you break the salad, mom? if you did, YOU'D BETTER FIX IT!”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“We believe in the wrong things. 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. It's not going to be explained to you in a prayer. And I'm not going to be able to explain it to you. Not because I'm as ignorant and 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.
I don't mean this to sound hopeless. Because in the same way that a kid can realise what "c-a-t" means, I think we can find the truths that live behind our words. I wish that I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don't have the words for it, since we hadn't yet learnt the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.”
― Rachel Cohn

“I think they would like the songs better
if I left out the names, or changed
the pronouns.”
― David Levithan, How They Met, and Other Stories

“WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? Tiny shouts in my ear, and I want to say, "Hopefully, go find a guy who knows there is no u in awesome”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“this is what i never allow myself to need.
and of course i've been needing it all along.”
― David Levithan John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“For the first time in a long time, I drive with no music. I'm not happy-not happy about Jane and Mr. Randall Water Polo Doucheface IV, not happy about Tiny abandoning me without so much as a phone call, not happy about my insufficiently fake fake ID-but in the dark on Lake Shore with the car eating up all the sound, there's something about the numbness in my lips after having kissed her that I want to keep and hold onto, something in it that seems pure, that seems like the singular truth.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“is that what relationships become? A reduced version of the hurt, nothing else let in.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“boundbydad: and, so you meanwhile, no bid saturday night plans? more quality time with mom?
grayscale: you, my dear, are my saturday night plans.
boundbydad: i'm honored.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“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, Every Day

“This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it's just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that is how it is, this is how it will be.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether the story’s true or not. What matters is the care that’s been put into the story. The love. If something is pretend, that usually means someone has taken the time to build a story for you to live in. And building stories takes a lot of work. And, yes, there will come a time when you’ll see the story isn’t true. But the intentions behind it? Completely true. The love behind it? Also true.”
― Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

“and the HE stands up. if frenchy's could bottle him up and sell him as porn, they'd probably own half of chicago within a year. he's what would happen after nine months if abercrombie fucked fitch. he's like a movie star, an olympic swimmer, and america's next top male model all at once. he's wearing a silver shirt and pink pants. everything about him sparkles.
not my type at all. but...”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“I want to argue with her, tell her that "sins of the flesh" is just a control mechanism-if you demonize a person's pleasure, then you can control his or her life.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“We wandered around in layers, unable to feel anything firsthand. But Lily—Lily didn’t mind. Lily was mittens and hot chocolate and snow angels that lifted from the ground and danced in the air. She said she loved winter, and I wondered if there was any season she didn’t love. I worked hard to accept her enthusiasm as genuine. My mental furnace was built for immolation, not warmth. I didn’t understand how she could be so happy. But such was the love I had fallen into that I decided not to question it, and to live within it.”
― David Levithan, The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily