David Levithan

“A guy can do far far worse than surrounding himself with people who restore his faith in humanity.”

“yearning n. and adj.At te core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.”

“Hell, yes," Dev says, sitting up now. "Don't get me wrong - we're totally going to make the beast with two backs tonight. But if we do it right, it's going to feel like holding hands.”

“paleontology, n.You couldn’t believe the longest relationship I’d ever been in had only lasted for five months.“Ever?” you asked, as if I might have overlooked a marriage.I couldn’t say, “I never found anyone who interested me all that much,” because it was only our second date, and the jury was still hearing your case.I sat there as you excavated your boyfriends, laid the bones out on the table for me to see. I shifted them around, tried to reassemble them, if only to see if they bore any resemblance to me.”

“Do you know when you cross against traffic? You look down the street and see a car coming, but you know you can get across before it gets to you. So even though there’s a DON’T WALK sign, you cross anyway. And there’s always a split second when you turn and see that car coming, and you know that if you don’t continue moving, it will all be over. That’s how I feel a lot of the time. I know I’ll make it across. I always make it across. But the car is always there, and I always stop to watch it coming.”

“ taciturn, adj. There are days you come home silent. You say words, but you're still silent. I used to bombard you with conversational crowbars, but now I simply let the apartment fall mute. I hear you in the room -- turning on music, typing on the keys, getting up for a drink, shifting in your chair. I try to have my conversation with those sounds.”

“ commonplace, adj. ... But then I'll walk into the bathroom and find you've forgotten to put the cap back on the toothpaste again, and it will be this splinter that I just keep stepping on.”

“ belittle, v.No, I don't listen to the weather in the morning. No, I don't keep track of what I spend. No, it hadn't occurred to me that the Q train would have been much faster. But every time you give me that look, it doesn't make me want to live up to your standards.”

“composure, n.You told me anyway, even though I didn’t want to know. A stupid drunken fling while you were visiting Toby in Austin. Months ago. And the thing I hate the most is knowing how much hinges on my reaction, how your unburdening can only lead to me being burdened. If I lose it now, I will lose you, too. I know that. I hate it.You wait for my response.”

“Its a fine line between love and stalking.”

“I find my greatest strengths in wanting ti be strong. I find my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave.”

“The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own.”

“I move my feet, turn away from her, try to pretend she's not there, which is the biggest fucking joke I've ever not laughed at.”

“...and suddenly you started singing out your love for me. My name and everything, loud enough to reach the top floors of all the buildings. I should have told you to stop, but I didn’t want you to stop. I didn’t mind if your love for me woke people up. I didn’t mind if it somehow sneaked into their sleep.”

“I want to take back at least half of the “I love you”s, because I didn’t mean them as much as the other ones.”

“For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to be loved.”

“After working for so long on being sure of each other, sure of this thing, suddenly we were unsure again.”

“What a strange phrase — –not seeing other people. As if it’s been constructed to be a lie. We see other people all the time. The question is what we do about it.”

“stanchion, n.I don't want to be the strong one, but I don't want to be the weak one either. Why does it feel like it's always one or the other? When we embrace, one of us is always holding the other a little tighter.”

“We stay this way until twilight colours the window and the hour calls me home”

“abyss, n.There are times when I doubt everything. When I regret everything you've taken from me, everything I've given you, and the waste of all the time I've spent on us.”

“I am so used to hints and mixed messages, saying things that might mean what they sort of sound like they mean. Games and contests, roles and rituals, talking in twelve languages at once so the true words won't be so obvious. I am not used to a plainspoken, honest truth.”

“So there we were. Once upon a time, during the storybook version of dating we'd gone through, I'd pretended that it was possible to love her when I only mildly liked her. Now I had no desire to pretend we'd ever be in love, and I liked her madly. 'Can we try to be wise with each other for a very long time?' I asked her.She laughed. 'You mean, can we share our fuckups and see if we can get any wisdom out of them?''Yeah,' I said. 'That would be nice.”

“No, really,' I said. 'I think she's great. And I honestly like her about twenty more times now than I did when we were dating. But love needs to have a future. And Sofia and I don't have a future. We've just had a good time sharing the present, that's all.”

“I don’t want you to think I got through this undamaged, okay? But I’m learning to live with it. Because otherwise, the damage is all you are.”

“isaac knows how stupid i find these things, and he finds them just as stupid as i do. like lol. now, if there's anything stupider than buddy lists, it's lol. if anyone ever uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it's not like anyone's laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person's tongue does. loll. loll. i can't think any more. loll. loll!”

“She asked me what was wrong, and I told her I had to end it. She was surprised, and asked my why I thought so. I told her it wasn't a thought, more a feeling, like I couldn't breathe and knew I had to get some air. It was a survival instinct, I told her.She said it was time for dinner. Then she sat me down and told me not to worry. She said moments like this were like waking up in the middle of the night: You're scared, your'e disoriented, and you're completely convinced you're right. But then you stay awake a little longer and you realize things aren't as fearful as they seem.”

“If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I am going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent. Would you prefer me to read from Daphne's Three Tender Months with Harold or Cindy and John's House of Everlasting Love? I guarantee, your sanity and your indie street cred won't last a chapter. And they are very, very short chapters." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.”

“I'm told there's no going back. So I'm choosing forward.”

“You think you know your possibilities. Then other people come into your lifeand suddenly there are so many more.”

“There is certainty in a ring.The non-ending, the non-beginning.The ongoing.The way it holds on to younot because it's fastened or stretched or adhered.It holds onbecause it fits.”

“There are hundreds of reasons for Daniel and meto be impossible. History has not been kindto two boys who love each other like we do.But putting that aside. And not even consideringthe fact that a hundred and fifty years ago,his family was in a small town in Russiaand my family was in a similarly small townin Ireland- I can't imagine they could haveimagined us here, together. Forgetting our gender,ignoring all the strange roads that led to usbeing in the same time and place, there is stillthe simple impossibility of love. That all of ourcontradicting securities and insecurities,interests and disinterests, beliefs and doubts,could somehow translate into this commonuncommon affection should be as impossible as walking to the moon. But instead, I love him.”

“When I say, Be my lover, I don't mean, Let's have an affair. I don't mean, Sleep with me. I don't mean, Be my secret. I want us to go back down to that root.I want you to be the one who loves me.I want to be the one who loves you.”

“I shouldn’t want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I’m seeing we don’t live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It’s an infinite playlist.”

“Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Or is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else?”

“In my kind of falling, there’s no landing. There’s only hitting the ground. Hard. Dead, or wanting to be dead. So the whole time you’re falling, it’s the worst feeling in the world. Because you feel you have no control over it. Because you know how it ends.”

“No funny stuff in here tonight, you understand?”Dash said, “I assure you I could not contemplate any of your so-called funny stuff seeing as how I have no idea why I’m even here.”Mark scoffed. “You bookish little pervert.”“Thank you, sir!” Dash said brightly.”

“Serrated, adj.And you said, "I'm not sure we can.”

“Love, n.I'm not going to even try.”

“You were in Sweden?" Boomer asked."No," I said. "The trip got called off at the last minute. Because of political the unrest""In Sweden?" Priya seemed skeptical."Yeah-isn't it strange how the Times isn't covering it? Half the country's on strike because of that thing the crown prince said about Pippi Longstocking Which means no meatballs for Christmas, if you know what I mean.""That's so sad!" Boomer said.”

“Life goes on is a redundancy. Life is defined by its going on.”

“I had forgotten this about love: how the simple things- the turn away, the turn towards- could be so complicated, and how the complicated things- the stolen night, the right words- could be so simple.”

“My mother said I should have a 'change of scenery.' The word scenery made be think of a play. And as we were driving around, it made sense that way. Because no matter how much the scenery changed, we were still on the same stage.”

“You know, I'd get a tattoo with your name on it. Only, I want you to have the freedom to change your name if you want to.”

“Everyone tried with me. And everytime, it felt like the whole point of life was to see if trying was ever enough.”

“You don't know me. You know one me, just like I know one you. And you can't know every me, and I can't know every you.”

“He was attractive. I knew that. And I knew that attractive people always got away with things.”

“breathtaking, adj.Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour before we say a single word.”

“obstinate, adj.Sometimes it becomes a contest: Which is more stubborn, the love or the two arguing people caught within it?”

“i feel bad for her - i do. a damn shame, really, that i had to have a mother. it can’t be easy having me for a son. nothing can prepare someone for that kind of disappointment.”