David Levithan

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

“We pencil-sketch our previous life so we can contrast it to the technicolor of the moment.”

“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.”

“Now she’s lit by the warm orange spreading from the horizon as not-quite-day, becomes not-quite-night”

“What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they've lived past lives, because there is no way the years I've spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I'm feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In you 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 now just arriving at the place you were always meant to be.”

“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.”

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

“Our moments are music, and sometimes – just sometimes – we can catch them and put them into some lasting form. If we didn’t have music, I don’t think we could ever be truly happy, and if we didn’t have special moments, we would never find music.”

“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.”

“I want to say more, but don't know what the words are supposed to be. I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable night time conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when there's no room in the air.”

“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.”

“If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. You memories will be my most lasting impressions.”

“That's what it felt like---that if I let a little of the hurt out, it would keep pouring out until I was a deflated balloon of a person, with a big monster of hurt in front of me.”

“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.”

“She is no longer a person in his life; instead, she is a person that other people will remind him of.”

“You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.”

“I was seventeen, halfway toward eighteen, and I had learned something nobody had ever taught me: Once you get to a certain age, especially if a driver’s license is involved, you can go a whole day—a whole week, even—without ever seeing your family. You can maybe say good morning and maybe say good night, but everything in the middle can be left blank.”

“After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why.”

“How much of my body is really me? My face is me, for sure. Anyone who looked at my face would know it was me. (...) But after that? If I showed myself a picture of myself from the shoulders down, would I be sure it was me? (...) I close my eyes and ask myself what my feet look like. I only kind of know. (...)I let it define me, but I can't even define it.”

“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.”