David Levithan

“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.”

“I barely notice colors unless I taste them. Not the yellows or the greens. I taste the deeper blues. The darker reds.”

“That whole week, we started to divide things into those two categories: anything or something. A piece of jewelry bougth at a department store: anything. A piece of jewelry made by hand: something. A dollar: anything. A sand dollar: something. A gift certificate: anything. An IOU for two hours of starwatching: something. A drunk kiss at a party: anything. A sober kiss alone in a park: something.”

“dumbfounded, adj.And still, for all the jealousy, all the doubt, sometimes I will be struck with a kind of awe that we're together. That someone like me could find someone like you - it renders me wordless. Because surely words would conspire against such luck, would protest the unlikelihood of such a turn of events. I didn't tell any of my friends about our first date. I waited until after our second, because I wanted to make sure it was real. I wouldn't believe it had happened until it had happened again. Then, later on, I would be overwhelmed by the evidence, by all the lines connecting you to me, and us to love.”

“awhile, adv.I love the vagueness of words that involve time. 'It took him awhile to come back' -- it could be a matter of minutes or hours, days or years. It is easy for me to say it took me awhile to know. That is about as accurate as I can get. There were sneak previews of knowing, for sure. Instance that made me feel, oh, this could be right, But the moment I shifted from a hope that needed to be proven to a certainty that would be continually challenged? There's no pinpointing that. Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it happened while I was asleep. Most likely, there's no signal event. There's just the steady accumulation of 'awhile'.”

“There was a pause. I was still scared by every gap in our conversation, fearing that this was it, the point where we had nothing left to say. I was still trying to impress you, and I still wanted to be impressed by you, so I could pass along pieces of your impressiveness to my friends, convincing myself this was possible.”

“you know, how people say it's good luck if a bird shits on you? and people believe it! i just want to grab them and say, 'dude, don't you realize this whole superstition was made up because no one could think of anything else good to say to a person who'd just been shit upon?”

“If you zoom close-if you get really close to someone, if you really get close to yourself-then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore.”

“There's no way to release yourself from a memory. It ends when it wants to end, whether it's in a flash or long after you've begged it to stop.”

“But empty-with empty, you are aware of what's supposed to be there. Empty means something is missing.”

“i can’t help thinking that ‘getting a life’ is something only a complete idiot could believe. like you can just drive to a store and get a life. see it in its shiny box and look inside the plastic window and catch a glimpse of yourself in a new life and say, ‘wow, i look much happier - i think this is the life i need to get!’ take it to the counter, ring it up, put it on your credit card. if getting a life was that easy, we’d be one blissed-out race. but we’re not. so it’s like, mom, your life isn’t out there waiting, so don’t think all you have to do is find it and get it. no, your life is right here. and, yeah, it sucks. lives usually do. so if you want things to change, you don’t need to get a life. you need to get off your ass.”

“tiny: did someone die?me: yeah, i did.he smiles again at that.tiny: well, then... welcome to the afterlife.”

“he is both the source of my happiness and the one i want to share it with.”

“tiny: but there is the word, this word phil wrayson taught me once: weltschmerz. it's the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be. i live in a big goddamned weltzschermz ocean, you know? and so do you.”

“you’d think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it’s painful.”

“Because it is senior year I have begun to see things as potential absences. The things I love will become the things I'll miss.”

“I have taken advantage of other people's weaknesses in order to cover my own.”

“An unarticulated crush is very different from an unrequited one, because at least with an unrequited crush you know what the hell you're doing, even if the other person isn't doing it back. An unarticulated crush is harder to grapple with, because it's a crush that you haven't even admitted to yourself. The romantic forces are all there -- you want to see him, you always notice him, you treat every word from him as if it weighs more than anyone else's. But you don't know why. You don't know that you're doing it. You'd follow him to the end of the earth without ever admitting that your feet were moving.”

“Because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore.”

“Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?”

“I'm not a very happy person," I told him."But sometimes I can trick myself into thinking I am.”

“WHAT WAS JANE AUSTEN'S LAST FINISHED NOVEL?""Vaginas and Virginity.""WHO IS THE LAST PERSON IAGO KILLS IN OTHELLO?""His manservant Retardio, for forgetting to change the Brita filter!""WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LITTLE MERMAID AT THE END OF CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S THE LITTLE MERMAID?""She turns into a fish and marries Nemo!""Fuck you!”

“There's no way for them to take away my sadness, but they can make sure I am not empty of all the other feelings.”

“The terrorists-those nineteen people, with hundreds or maybe thousands behind them-did the worst thing you can possibly imagine. But tens of millions people did the right thing...On 9/11, all the hatred and murder could not compare with the weight of love, of bravery, of caring.”

“In the next election, I'm voting for your mom to be the next God.”

“He never wears a watch (his own rebellion against time, against watching).”

“I wonder if it's possible to have happiness without it being at someone else's expense.”

“This is my life, I think. I am an accumulation of objects.”

“I want you to spend the night,” you said. And it was definitely your phrasing that ensured it. If you had said, “Let’s have sex,” or “Let’s go to my place,” or even “I really want you,” I’m not sure we would have gone quite as far as we did. But I loved the notion that the night was mine to spend, and I immediately decided to spend it with you.”

“There has to be a moment at the beginning where you wonder whether you’re in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself. If the moment doesn’t pass, that’s it—you’re done. And if the moment does pass, it never goes that far. It stands in the distance, ready for whenever you want it back. Sometimes it’s even there when you thought you were searching for something else, like an escape route, or your lovers’ face.”

“Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.”

“The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.”

“The mistake is thinking that there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.”

“It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”

“recant, v.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. I want to take back the book of artsy photos I gave you, because you didn’t get it and said it was hipster trash. I want to take back what I said about you being an emotional zombie. I want to take back the time I called you “honey” in front of your sister and you looked like I had just shown her pictures of us having sex. I want to take back the wineglass I broke when I was mad, because it was a nice wineglass and the argument would have ended anyway. I want to take back the time we had sex in a rent-a-car, not because I feel bad about the people who got in the car after us, but because it was massively uncomfortable. I want to take back the trust I had while you were away in Austin. I want to take back the time I said you were a genius, because I was being sarcastic and I should have just said you’d hurt my feelings. 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.”

“But we comforted ourselves with what we really meant to say, which was: "I don't normally feel this good about what I'm doing."Measure the hope of that moment, that feeling.Everything else will be measured against it.”

“I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral—these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, “I loved him. We all loved him so much.” I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them.”

“me giving my mom romantic advice is kind of like a goldfish giving a snail advice on how to fly.” -Will Grayson (pg. 66)”

“avant-garde, adj.This was after Alisa' show, the reverse-blackface rendition of Gone With the Wind, including songs from the Empire Records soundtrack and an interval of nineteenth-century German poetry, recited with a lisp."What does avant-garde mean, anyway?" I asked."I believe it translates as favor to your friends," you replied.”

“I wonder if it's possible to start a new relationship without hurting someone else.”

“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.”

“I hope suffering don't exist.”

“placid, adj.Sometimes I love it when we just lie on our backs, gaze off, stay still.”

“And still, for all the jealously, all the doubt, sometimes I will be struck with a kind of awe that we're together. That someone like me could find someone like you --- it renders me wordless. Because surely words would conspire against such luck, would protest the unlikelihood of such a turn of events.”

“And maybe it is only by finding yourself that you can feel the true intensity of becoming close to another person.”

“exacerbate, v.I believe your exact words were: "You're getting too emotional.”

“candid, adj."Most times, when I'm having sex, I'd rather be reading."This was, I admit, a strange thing to say on a second date.I guess I was just giving you a warning."Most times when I'm reading," you said, "I'd rather be having sex".”

“arrears, n.My faithfulness was as unthinking as your lapse. Of all the things I though would go wrong, I never thought it would be that."It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”

“ubiquitous, adj.When it’s going well, the fact of it is everywhere. It’s there in the song that shuffles into your ears. It’s there in the book you’re reading. It’s there on the shelves of the store as you reach for a towel and forget about the towel. It’s there as you open the door. As you stare off into the subway, it’s what you’re looking at. You wear it on the inside of your hat. It lines your pockets. It’s the temperature.The hitch, of course, it that when it’s going badly, it’s in all the same places.”

“If you wanted to reassemble Elijah's afternoon, you could probably do it by stringing together all the photographs and all of the frames of videotape that he walks into. Always a passerby, he is immortalized and unknown.”