David Levithan

“Brothers are not like sisters.”

“I want you to be honest with me. Even if it hurts. Although I would prefer for it not to hurt.”

“That's not how I'd planned it to be.""How did you plan it to be?" I ask, not to be snarky but because I am genuinely curious."I planned it to be a million different things," he replies. "And in the end, I couldn't figure which one it should be.”

“I guess that's the danger with firsts—you lose all sense of proportion. So I made a fool of myself, even though I didn'trealize it at the time. I was so devoted to him.”

“I want love to conquer all. But love can't conquer anything. It can't do anything on it's own.It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf.”

“The boy I just kissed is talking to my father. The boy I want to kiss again is waiting for my mother to servepancakes.I must fight the urge to freak.”

“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.”

“I'm just looking for someone," I hedge."Aren't we all?" Infinite Darlene vamps ruefully. I think I'm off the hook, but then she adds,"Is it someone special?""It's nothing," I say, crossing my fingers. I pray that it's not nothing.”

“Having grown up here, I always wonder what it would be like to see this city as a tourist. Is it ever a disappointment? I have to believe that New York always lives up to its reputation. The buildings really are that tall. The lights really are that bright. There's truly a story on every corner. But it still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions. To not feel the bright lights even as they fill the air. To see the tall buildings and only feel a deep longing for the stars.”

“there was a time before youbut I can't remember it nowa time before your beauty and Iwere formally introducedI'm sure I lived without youbut I don't remember howcan't imagine living withoutthese feelings you've producedjust once glanceand my life was redrawnjust one wordand my vocabulary changedI asked the timeand you said what's the hurry?you asked my nameand I almost forgot”

“Tell me a way you think this can work.""We'll find a way," I tell her."That's not an answer. It's a hope.""Hope's gotten us this far. Not answers.”

“You can't deny that there's something between us.""No. There is. When I saw you today--I didn't know I'd been waiting for you until you were there. And then all of that waiting rushed through me in a second. That's something... but I don't know if it's certainty.”

“It's one thing to fall in love. It's another to feel someone else falling in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.”

“i have to cross the river of extreme awkwardness in order to get to the paradise on the other side.”

“And here we are, so different from who we were on September 10th. And also different from who we were on the 11th. And the 12th. And yesterday. Sometimes you see the before/after. And sometimes it's as soft as saying hello.”

“How amazing it is that friendships can become so full that you can't imagine what your life was like before them.”

“In Sliding Doors, the whole idea is that every choice you make, and every single thing that happens to you changes the trajectory of your life, and once you are put on that trajectory, there is no way back. But Groundhog Day - which, I tell him, also happens to be a much better movie - says the opposite. It says if you mess up or make the wrong choice, you just have to keep at it until you do it right.”

“We love and we feel and we try and we hope.”

“The secret to living long is to have something to live for.”

“I still find it hard to see Ground Zero. I still find it hard to witness the nothingness. The lights are not a remedy for this. There will never be a remedy for this. But they are a strikingly apt presence. They are both something and nothing at once. They fill the space without claiming it as their own. They are translucent. They blur.”

“The swim of things. I go on an airplane. I walk under the Empire State Building. I take the bus, and the subway, and am surrounded by strangers the whole time. I certainly have room in my life for caution, but I have no room in my life for paralyzing fear. There's always a risk. There always has been. But I'd rather live my life than die of negations.”

“It is still strange to see the skyline. I have never seen an absence that's so physical. It's possible I will see the absence for the rest of my life, even when there is something else there. Which is ok. The thing to remember when looking at an absence is that you are standing outside of it.”

“We are face to face with enormity again, but this time we are going to make it through. It is a moment we can get out of. Together.”

“It's never the same city. Your city isn't even the same as my city, I bet.”

“I collected their papers. The ones that blew into Brooklyn. They were just there at first. I didn't even know what they were. But once I did, I went all over the place, picking them up. I don't know what to do with them. I mean, they're meaningless now, but they still exist. You can't throw out something like that. You can't make them gone like that.”

“On 9/11, all the hatred and murder could not compare with the weight of love, of bravery, of caring. I have to believe that. I honestly believe that. I think we saw the way humanity works on that day, and while some of it was horrifying, so much of it was good.”

“Maybe there's a way to keep us in this moment. Not the sad part. But the coming together part.”

“I want to know why this is such a part of me. I want to know why this thing that happened to other people has happened so much to me. I keep looking for the lesson.”

“We all understand that this is just music. We all understand these songs were written Before - there is no way the band could have known how we would hear them After. But the songs ring true.”

“But I guess the thing about fear is that it defies the laws of rationality. It creates its own laws instead.”

“Breathing is hard. When you cry so much, it makes you realize that breathing is hard.”

“In small letters, someone has written NEVER FORGET on one of the slats. I know it's supposed to be a pledge, but it feels like a curse. Don't we have to forget some of it? Don't we have to forget this feeling? If we don't, how will we live?”

“Here's what breaks us: Even though we know better, we still want everything to be all right.”

“We just want to walk. Our legs need to move to keep our minds from collapsing.”

“Limbo is the state where there are only questions. That was as far as I'd gotten.”

“It will affect me in ways I can't even begin to get my mind around. This day is a dark crater. There is no room for songs. The songs are wrong. Every song is wrong. And I don't know what to do without music.”

“I cannot think of a single word to describe what we feel. I think we all feel it, to varying degrees. Perhaps in some other language there is a word for 'the world is terribly wrong.' That feeling of stun and unbelief and abandonment and shock and horror and distress.”

“I know immediately that this is going to be one of the true historic moments of my life - that the personal and the historic are converging. I know people will ask, 'Where were you when you first heard?”

“At one point they'd repeated everything enough, and I wanted to tell them to stop showing the planes hitting the tower. We didn't need to see it again. And yet I didn't turn it off. Because I was hanging on every minute, wanting to be there when whatever was going to happen next actually happened.”

“One of the towers has fallen. When it's our turn to leave, it's like something in me is finally willing to listen, and suddenly I understand what it means. The tower doesn't exist anymore. Something I've seen my entire life - something so much larger than my entire life - is gone. That is my first reaction. And then I think about all the people inside. There must have been people inside.”

“Even though I'm seventeen, I guess I still thought this would always be true - that there would always be that lost-and-found, and not the lost-and-still-lost that I am now trapped inside.”

“While nobody wants to say how bad it is, there's no way to pretend it's a normal day.”

“This isn't even something I've feared, because I never knew it was a possibility.”

“Seeing it erases any premonitions I might have had, because even if I felt something was wrong, I never would have pictured this.”

“You said before that you were tired. Well, I’m tired, too. Tired of letting everything stay unsaid. We spend all our time together, and we do it because we want to, right? And I guess I think a lot about that, and about us. And about … well, more. Us having more. It’s not about lust or sex or whatever you want to call it. I mean, some of it is that. But mostly it’s about belonging. When I’m with you, I belong. It just naturally felt like that. And I think it felt like that for you. But I don’t know where that leaves us, or even what that is. I’m just tired of trying to figure it out myself. I need the other half of the equation.”

“The running commentary, the loving support, the jokes and the observations and the random thoughts that are made a little less random when they’re shared. The desire to be heard is as deeply seeded as the desire to be loved.”

“Some days are like this. And the only way to get through them is to remember that they are only one day, and that every day ends.”

“Belonging. Togetherness. These words are as complicated and confusing as the word love. It’s probably all the same thing. Or it would be if we let it be. I can only guess from observation.”

“Feeling someone else’s anger is bad; being left alone is worse.”

“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.”