Top 500 David Levithan Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “That strange, twisted, torn love. That conflict between what your heart knows is right and what your mind is told is right.”

— David Levithan

152. “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.”

— David Levithan

153. “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?”

— David Levithan

154. “But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself.”

— David Levithan

155. “My pride shut me up, my hurt shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.”

— David Levithan

156. “It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can’t even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It’s simply a matter of is and is no longer.”

— David Levithan

157. “Beauty comes naturally, but it’s hard to be stunning by accident.”

— David Levithan

158. “As if when someone close to us dies, we momentarily trade places with them, in the moment right before. And as we get over it, we’re really living their life in reverse, from death to life, from sickness to health.”

— David Levithan

159. “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.”

— David Levithan

160. “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.”

— David Levithan

161. “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.”

— David Levithan

162. “Feeling someone else’s anger is bad; being left alone is worse.”

— David Levithan

163. “I notice you, I want to say. Even when no one else does, I do. I will.”

— David Levithan

164. “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.”

— David Levithan

165. “I want to believe there is a somebody out there just for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody.”

— David Levithan

166. “It is very hard to stay alive just for your own sake. It is very hard to stare into day after day without another familiar face staring back. It turns your heart into a purposeless muscle.”

— David Levithan

167. “You know what’s a great metaphor for love? Sleeping beauty. Because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up. – Tiny Cooper.”

— David Levithan

168. “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.”

— David Levithan

169. “We found out a long time ago that we weren’t meant to fall in love with each other. But a part of me still fell in hope with him.”

— David Levithan

170. “There are times when I worry that I’ve already lost myself. That is, that my self is so inseparable from being with you that if we were to separate, I would no longer be. I save this thought for when I feel the darkest discontent. I never meant to depend so much on someone else.”

— David Levithan

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

— David Levithan

172. “We lost track of time because we felt like time had lost track of us.”

— David Levithan

173. “Once you experience enormity, it lingers everywhere you look, and want to be every word you say.”

— David Levithan

174. “I had made it somewhere special, and I’d gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I’d climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I found, was what I needed.”

— David Levithan

175. “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.”

— David Levithan

176. “You don’t know, but I’m noticing.”

— David Levithan

177. “I know from experience that beneath every peripheral girl is a central truth. She’s hiding hers away, but at the same time she wants me to see it.”

— David Levithan

178. “I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that’s not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood.”

— David Levithan

179. “We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.”

— David Levithan

180. “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.”

— David Levithan

181. “It was so much easier when I didn’t want anything. Not getting what you want can make you cruel.”

— David Levithan

182. “Love weaves itself from hundreds of threads.”

— David Levithan

183. “I hate the phrase ‘more than friends’,” Joni told me one night not long ago. “It’s such nonsense. When I’m going out with someone, we’re not ‘more than friends’ – most of the time, we’re not even friends. ‘More than friends’ makes no sense. Look at us. There’s nothing more than us.”

— David Levithan

184. “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.”

— David Levithan

185. “And as we drift into sleep, I feel something I’ve never felt before. A closeness that isn’t merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that we’ve only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging.”

— David Levithan

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

— David Levithan

187. “Love and I once had a great relationship, but I fear we’ve broken up. It cheated on me, wrecked my heart, and then went on to date other people. A lot of other people. And I can’t stand to watch it, since love’s going to cheat on them too.”

— David Levithan

188. “The more kindness and justice are challenged, the more we must embrace them. Only when you are challenged – and only when you challenge yourself – do you discover what truly matters.”

— David Levithan

189. “I am stronger than words and I am bigger than the box I’m in, and then I see her in the crowd and I fall apart.”

— David Levithan

190. “In the long term, I can see how siblings could be helpful in life – someone to share family secrets with, someone of your own generation who knows if your memories are right or wrong, someone who sees you at eight and eighteen and forty-eight all at the once, and doesn’t mind. I understand that. But in the short term, siblings are at best a hassle and at worst a terror.”

— David Levithan

191. “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.”

— David Levithan

192. “It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it’s lonely, because you feel you can’t talk about it.”

— David Levithan

193. “Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can’t deal with the fear of being alone.”

— David Levithan

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

— David Levithan

195. “The unwarranted devotion. Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can’t deal with the fear of being alone. The hope tinged with doubt, and the doubt tinged with hope. Every time I see these feelings in someone else’s face, it weighs me down.”

— David Levithan

196. “The heart is a treacherous beast, but it means well.”

— David Levithan

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

— David Levithan

198. “I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn’t so much about plot. It was much more about character.”

— David Levithan

199. “Once the storm comes out, the landscape changes. What you had before is altered in some way. And you have a choice: build something new and better from what is left or abandon it.”

— David Levithan

200. “But in the short term, siblings are at best a hassle and at worst a terror.”

— David Levithan