Top 660 Quotes & Sayings by David Levithan

Readers embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.

It's almost scary how amateur I am when it comes to musicals - I'm a musical goer, but I am not as obsessed with musicals as perhaps some of my theatrical friends are.

One of my best friends is named David Leventhal, and it has always been a constant source of amusement to see how the similarity and differences play out in our lives.

I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.

There's no such thing as a perfect person, so it makes no sense to write a perfect person. I don't know any author who'd try. And we write characters, not representations of groups.

People read vampire novels and say, 'Oh I want to read another vampire novel.' People read fantasy, and they're like, 'Oh I love fantasy.' I don't know that people are necessarily finishing 'Hunger Games' and immediately wanting to read another dystopian tale.

My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid.

The important thing is for the characters to feel real, and to be given the humanity they are due. That granting of humanity is what separates a full portrait from a stereotype.

I can honestly say I've never thought for a second about whether a character reflects poorly on any group. All that matters to me is that the character is true to my belief in who he or she is.

I don't want to steal anybody's story. I very much want to use the stories that I hear to get lost in my mind, to tell a larger story.

She transforms once again into someone carefree, and I transform into someone whose only care is her.

There is no such thing as no choice. There is always a choice. The only question is whether it's a bearable one.

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

Here’s what I know about the realm of possibility— it is always expanding, it is never what you think it is. Everything around us was once deemed impossible. From the airplane overhead to the phones in our pockets to the choir girl putting her arm around the metalhead. As hard as it is for us to see sometimes, we all exist within the realm of possibility. Most of the limits are of our own world’s devising. And yet, every day we each do so many things that were once impossible to us.

I no longer think she's just being nice. She's being kind. Which is much more a sign of character than mere niceness. Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.

Answerless questions can destroy you. Move on.

She is my first and only love. Most people know that their first love will not be their only love. But for me, she is both.

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.

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

The older you get, the wiser you are - this is true. But you also question what use this wisdom is.y

I try to convince myself that it's the alcohol talking. But alcohol can't talk. It just sits there. It can't even get itself out of the bottle.

Even if you were green and had a beard and a male appendage between your legs. Even if your eyebrows were orange and you had a mole covering your entire cheek and a nose that poked me in the eye every time I kissed you. Even if you weighed seven hundred pounds and had hair the size of a Doberman under your arms. Even then, I would love you.

Happiness is so rarely a part of my vocabulary, because for me it's so fleeting

Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.

The ocean makes its music; the wind does its dance. We hold on. At first we hold on to one another, but then it starts to feel like we are holding on to something even bigger than that. Greater.

We'd said we'd keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it's gone, it's gone. We should have said we'd keep in words, because they are all we can string between us--words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen.

If I'm not telling you something, it's for a reason. Just because you trust me, it doesn't mean I have to automatically trust you. Trust doesn't work like that.

It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it's lonely, because you feel you can't talk about it. You feel it's something between you and the body. You feel it's a battle you will never win . . . and yet you fight it day after day, and it wears you down. Even if you try to ignore it, the energy it takes to ignore it will exhaust you.

And If only I could, I'd make a deal with God.

Falling in love with someone doesn’t mean you know any better how they feel. It only means you know how you feel.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.

Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.

Self-preservation isn't worth it if you can't live with the self you're preserving

This is the thing they don't tell you about being a third wheel - it's not like you're the wheel that's added on. You were one of the original two wheels, but suddenly you're not so important anymore. The relationship drives fine without you.

You have to believe there are kisses and laughs and risks worth taking.

But I guess you don't see the planets when you're staring at the sun. You just get blinded.

I will never have a photograph of her to carry around in my pocket. I will never have a letter in her handwriting, or a scrap-book of everything we've done. I will never share an apartment with her in the city. I will never know if we are listening to the same song at the same time. We will not grow old together. I will not be the person she calls when she's in trouble. She will not be the person I call when I have stories to tell. I will never be able to keep anything she's given to me.

There are all these moments you don't think you will survive. And then you survive.

I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.

The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations - all of them rearranging themselves so this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

She is so lost in her sadness that she has no idea how visible it is.

Part of growing up is making sure your sense of reality isn't entirely grounded in your own mind.

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

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.

I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.

Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.

It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored.

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.

We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.

People are rarely as attractive in reality as they are in the eyes of the people who are in love with them. Which is, I suppose, as it should be.

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

I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else.

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

You think you know your possibilities. Then other people come into your life and suddenly there are so many more.

Every relationship has a hard part at the beginning. This is our hard part. It's not like a puzzle piece where there's an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.

We are not taught "love thy neighbor unless their skin is a different color from yours " or "love thy neighbor unless they don't make money as you do" or "love thy neighbor unless they don't share your belies." We are taught "love thy neighbor". No exceptions. We are all in this together - every single one of us. And the only way we are going to survive as a society is through compassion. A Great Community does not mean we all think the same things or do the same things. It simply means we are willing to work together and are willing to love despite our differences.

In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals.

I get it. The things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.

The words that matter always stay.

I saw his scars - the visible ones-and saw how breaking him had not made him any less beautiful. If anything, he stood stronger, because he'd survived.