David Levithan

“I resent that the hours seem boring now, emptier. Going through the motions gives you plenty of time to examine the motions. I used to find this interesting. Now it has taken on the taint of meaninglessness. [...] This is the trap of having something to live for: Everything else seems lifeless.”

“This is no longer restlessness--it's recklessness. At first we're walking hand in hand. Then we're running hand in hand. That giddy rush of keeping up with one another, of zooming through the school, reducing everything that's not us into an inconsequential blur. We are laughing, we are playful. We leave her books in her locker and move out of the building, into the air, the real air, the sunshine and the trees and the less burdensome world. I am breaking the rules...”

“If I were in a different body, this would be the time I would lean down and kiss her. If I were in a different body, that kiss could transform the night from off to on. If I were in a different body, she would see me inside. She would see what she wanted to see.But now it's awkward.”

“Because of the size of this body, I must concentrate much harder than I usually do. Even the small things -- my foot on the gas pedal, the amount of space I have to leave around me in the halls -- require major adjustment.And there are the looks I get -- such undisguised disgust. Not just from other students. From teachers. From strangers. The judgment flows freely. It's possible that they're reacting to the thing that Finn has allowed himself to become. But there's also something more primal, something more defensive in their disgust. I am what they fear becoming.I've worn black today, because I've heard so often that it's supposed to be slimming. But instead I am this sphere of darkness submarining through the halls.”

“When Dawn looked at Vic, she saw Vic exactly as he wanted to be seen. Whereas Vic's parents couldn't help seeing who he used to be, and so many friends and strangers couldn't help seeing who he didn't want to be anymore, Dawn only saw him. Call it a blur if you want, but Dawn didn't see a blur. She saw a very distinct, very clear person.”

“I am jealous of anyone who can make other people care so much.”

“They are so caught up in their happiness that they don't realize I'm not really a part of it. I am wandering along the periphery. I am like the people in the Winslow Homer paintings, sharing the same room with them but not really there. I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that's not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood. . . . There are moments I just sit in my frame, float in my tank, ride in my car and say nothing, think nothing that connects me to anything at all.”

“We come to a corner where there are a few people protesting the festivities. I don't understand this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired.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.”

“Any time I let it, the weight of living creeps in and starts to drag her down. It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored. People talk to her, but it feels like they are outside a house, talking through the walls. There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with. There's a false beast that takes the form of instinct and harps on the pointlessness of everything that happens.”

“I have to keep reminding myself -- this is not me. It is chemistry. It is biology. It is not who I am.”

“Knowledge is the only thing I take with me when I go.”

“I'll see you later," I say.Such a basic promise. But to Rhiannon, it means the world.”

“Every day I am someone else. I am myself-I know I am myself-but I am also someone else.It has always been like this.”

“I leave her in the bed. I put on my clothes, pick up my keys, and close the door behind me. I turn back. I keep turning back to see her. Even when there are walls between us. I keep turning back. I keep turning in her direction.”

“I don't know how this works. Or why. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago. I'm never going to figure it out, any more than a normal person figure out his or her own existence. After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why. You can have theories, but there will never be proof.”

“Maybe fate's arithmetic is so diffuse that it's not arithmetic at all.”

“I am here because of love.”

“Enlightenment is scary. Sometimes things look better in the dark.”

“I say good-bye to hope, but I also say good-bye to hope's disappointment.”

“I wanted every word to last for hours, every gaze to last for days.”

“If he said anything to me, I would gather the sentences like a shell seeker.”

“Betrayal. Lust. Secrecy. Devotion. I think we do these things to feel more alive. When the truth is that alive is alive -- you can feel it in anything, if you give it a chance.”

“I could relate to Miss Lucy because her life made absolutely no sense.”

“But that’s the part that’s so unfair. I have nothing else on my mind. How come I have to be the one sitting around analyzing him in like microscopic detail, and he gets to be the one with other things on his mind?”

“We spend most of the day together at school, but not in a way that limits our interactions with other people. If anything, we incorporate our friends into what we have between us. We exist as individuals. We exist as a pair. We exist as parts of trios, quartets, and so on. And it all feels right.”

“Maybe Dana loved you for your pain.I loved you for everything.”

“Infinity is against us," I told him. "There's no way for us ever to count it or control it or understand it.”

“You know one me. Just like I know one you. But you can't know every me, Evan. And I can't know every you.”

“That would have been the worst kind of violation, to read you words uninvited.”

“The first time the three of us went to the movies together, he waited until you went to get popcorn, and then he said, "You don't mind, do you?" And I'd been so moved that he'd asked, that he wanted my permission.”

“Without you I wouldn't have been able to contain the hate. I would have used it against myself. You're the one who helped me control it. My mind spun out to other things.But it always came back to you.”

“He’ll have to prove it to you. Every day, he’ll have to prove he’s worthy ofyou. And if he doesn’t, that’s it. But I think he will.”

“Everything is in itsright place, and my heart wants to believe this can always be true. My heart wants tomake it true, even as something darker tugs it away.”

“Every person is a possibility. The hopeless romantics feel it most acutely, but even for others, the only way to keep going is to see every person as a possibility.”

“want to see you, but I’m not sure if we should do that. I want to hear about what’s going on, but I’m afraid thatwill only start everything again. I love you—I do—but I am afraid of making that love too important. Because you’realways going to leave me, A. We can’t deny it. You’re always going to leave.”

“I am starting to realize what this means, and how sad it would be.I am already feeling some of the sadness now, and it isn’t even happening.”

“I’ve known this for awhile, but you can know something for years without it really hitting you. Now it’shitting me.”

“Today was awkward, but I think that’s because it feels like a very awkward time. It isn’t about you, and it isn’tabout love. It’s about everything crashing together at once.”

“If you think about it hard enough, if you trace potentialreverberations long enough, every step can be a false step, any move can lead to anunintended consequence.Who am I ignoring that I shouldn’t be ignoring? What am I not saying that I should besaying? What won’t I notice that she would absolutely notice? While I’m out in thepublic hallways, what private languages am I not hearing?”

“I don’t want to throw everything away for something uncertain.”

“You don’t need to know how. You just make up your mind and it happens.”

“Eyes bloodshot, I want to say. Eating a lot of Cheetos. Staring into space. Eating moreCheetos. It must be love. What else could it possibly be?”

“That was easy compared to this. It’s one thing to fall in love. It’s another to feelsomeone else falling in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.”

“I am trying not to think of what will happen next.I am trying not to think of endings.”

“I only have a day to give—so why can’t it be a goodone? Why can’t it be a shared one? Why can’t I take the music of the moment and seehow long it can last?”

“I find it hard to look at her. I know from experience that beneath every peripheral girlis a central truth.”

“There was something about our silence that made me comfortable. He wasn't talking to me, but I didn't feel ignored. I felt we were part of the same moment, and it didn't need to be defined.”

“No," he finally said. "I don't think you're boring. I think there are times you don't allow yourself to be interesting...but clearly that can change.”

“The problem, says my sister, Kelly, is not that I can't get over Naomi - it's that I refuse to.... Loving Naomi and waiting for her to come back to me - it's not a stalker thing, but more like a personal mission. A job.”

“It's not the easy things that let you get to know a person.”