David Levithan

“I think that if you were somehow able to measure the weight of human kindness, it would have weighed more on 9/11 than it ever had. 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 don't mean that God made this happen to teach us something. Or to teach me something. How monstrously selfish would that be? I just mean that if we go through this thing and it changes us so much, you have to hope that it changes us for the better, right? If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.”

“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.”

“I wake up thinking of yesterday. The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.”

“I can take everything on her face at face value, and that's valuable in a friend.”

“You know there's no such thing as a complete lie. There's always some truth in there.”

“This, I think, is how people survive: Even when horrible things have been done to us, we can still find gratitude in one another.”

“My face seems too square and my eyes too big, like I'm perpetually surprised, but there's nothing wrong with me that I can fix.”

“When you live as I do, you cannot indulge in jealousy. If you do, it will rip you apart.”

“But if I didn’t want to be alone, then why didn’t I want to be with anyone else?”

“This is what a memorial is: standing still, staring at something that isn’t ther”

“I don’t want to know anything, and I want to know it all”

“I had no idea what I wanted, only that I wanted something, which is the worst kind of wanting.”

“What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.”

“...because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life.”

“Because when a guy's a jerk or an asshole, it's easier because you know exactly where you stand.”

“Maybe there is hope in the fragments, that what is lost can always be filled in by someone who knows.”

“I think they have compatible silences.”

“They defy gravity, as good books should.”

“I hate the way you talk to meAnd the way you cut your hairI hate the way you drive my carI hate it when you stareI hate your big dumb combat bootsAnd the way you read my mindI hate you so much, that it makes me sickAnd even makes me rhymeI hate the way you're always rightI hate it when you lieI hate it when you make me laughEven worse when you make me cryI hate it when you not aroundAnd the fact that you didn't callBut mostly I hate the way I don't hate youNot even closeNot even a little bitNot even at all”

“Please may this not be a game. Please may this not be a game. Because if it’s a game, I know I’m going to lose.”

“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.”

“This brief transcript of moments, written in the body, is so deeply satisfying to read.”

“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.”

“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.”

“She raised her hand to cut me off. "I am aware of your epistolary flirtation. Which is all well and good--as long as it's well and good. Before I ask you some questions, perhaps you would like some tea?""That would depend on what kind of tea you were offering.""So diffident! Suppose it was Earl Grey."I shook my head. "Tastes like pencil shavings.""Lady Grey.""I don't drink beverages named after beheaded monarchs. It seems so tacky.""Chamomile?""Might as well sip butterfly wings.""Green tea?""You can't be serious."The old woman nodded her approval. "I wasn't.""Because you know when a cow chews grass? And he or she chews and chews and chews? Well, green tea tastes like French-kissing that cow after it's done chewing all that grass.""Would you like some mint tea?""Only under duress.""English breakfast."I clapped my hands. "Now you're talking!”

“Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given.”

“only, adj. Thats the dilemma isn't it? when you're single, there's the sadness and joy of only me. And when you're paired, there's the sadness and joy of only you.”

“If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.”

“If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently.”

“every morning i pray that the school bus will crash and we'll all die in a fiery wreck. then my mom will be able to sue the school bus company for never making school buses with seat belts, and she'll be able to get more money for my tragic death than i would've ever made in my tragic life. unless the lawyers from the school bus company can prove to the jury that i was guaranteed to be a fuckup. then they'd get away with buying my mom a used ford fiesta and call it even.”

“I could have been hanging out with my friends, but most of them were hanging out with their families or their Wiis. (Wiis? Wiii? What is the plural?)”

“I measure the momentin the heartbeats I skip”

“I loved you from that moment on,” I say.“I loved you from that moment on,” you agree.”

“x, n.Doesn’t it strike you as strange that we have a letter in the alphabet that nobody uses? It represents one-twenty-sixth of the possibility of our language, and we let it languish. If you and I really, truly wanted to change the world, we’d invent more words that started with x.”

“I look for that confirmation that if I didn’t have you, I’d still be a person someone would want.”

“I have never wanted a lover. In order to have a lover, I must go back to the root of the word. For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to be loved.”

“fraught, adj.Does every “I love you” deserve an “I love you too”? Does every kiss deserve a kiss back? Does every night deserve to be spent on a lover?If the answer to any of these is “No,” what do we do?”

“I am an adjective that is quickly turning into a noun.”

“doldrums, n.The proper verb for depression is sink.”

“Even if you’re the victor, you’ve hurt the other person, and there has to be some loss associated with that.”

“I want to take back at least half the “I love you”s, because it feels safer that way.”

“I guess I don’t believe in a small break. I feel a break is a break, and if it starts small, it only gets wider.”

“He was my first boyfriend, and I made him my everything - he was my new life, my new love, my new compass point. I guess that's the danger with firsts - you lose all sense of proportion.”

“What's the big deal with France? How come everyone wants to go there? Let me tell you about France. Their music sucks. Their movies suck. Their berets suck. Their croissants are pretty good, but the place overall still sucks.My family went there once on the way to visit Dad's homeland family. EuroDisney. Need I say more?”

“If she were running through the rye, if she were headed towards the abyss, I would grab hold with every ounce of my strength, with every scared beat of my heart, with every thought that could only be for her. And if I were to be running the same way, I’d like to think she’d do the same. But maybe her hands would be busy holding the book. Maybe she wouldn’t see me, too intent on looking for Phoebe from the carousel. Or waiting for Holden to hold her, to wrap her in the pages of his arms, to say she was the only one who truly knew him, as I plunged past her, sad to be leaving, and a little happy to be away.”

“It’s up to you, not fate.True. But it was also up to Lily.That was the trickiest part.”

“I love a man who doesn’t let go of the leash, even when it leads him to ruin.”

“And I’ll admit—I thought it might be best if we kept it all to the page, passed that notebook back and forth until we were ninety. But clearly that wasn’t meant to be. And who am I to blow against the wind?”

“Fate has a strange way of making plans.”