David Levithan
You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here's a hint - ask yourself who wrote them. I assure you, it wasn't just the women. It's the great male fantasy - all it takes is one dance to know that she's the one. All it takes is the sound of her song from the tower, or a look at her sleeping face. And right away you know - this is the girl in your head, sleeping or dancing or singing in front of you. Yes, girls want their princes, but boys want their princesses just as much. And they don't want a very long courtships. They want to know immediately.Collection: Girl
You like him because he's a lost boy. Believe me, I've seen it happen before. But do you know what happens to girls who love lost boys? They become lost themselves. Without fail.Collection: Girl
luckily, tiny texts me every five minutes or so. i don't know how he does it without getting caught in class. maybe he hides the phone in the folds of his stomach or something.Collection: Phones
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.Collection: Country
Moments into minutes. Minutes into hours. Hours into days. Days into years. Years into possibility. This will linger.Collection: Years
me: just don't ask about his forty-three ex-boyfriends, okay? or ask him about why he's carrying around an axe. mom:... me: i'm kidding about the axe part.Collection: Mom
it is so unfair that he lives in ohio, because that should be close enough, but since neither of us drives and neither of us would ever in a million years say, 'hey, mom, do you want to drive me across indiana to see a boy?,' we're kind of stuck.Collection: Mom
instead i head to the computer and it's like i turn into a little girl who's just seen her first rainbow. i get all giddy and nervous and hopeful and despairing and i tell myself not to look obsessively at my buddy list, but it might as well be projected onto the insides of my eyelids. at 8:05 his name pops up, and i start to count. i only get to twelve before his IM pops up.Collection: Girl
next to it was a dvd called 'as i get laid dying,' which had a hospital scene on the front. it was like grey's anatomy, only with less grey and more anatomy.Collection: Dvds
Every two people cause and intersection. Every person alters the world.Collection: Two
Maybe tonight you're scared of falling, and maybe there's somebody here or somewhere else you're thinking about, worrying over, fretting over, trying to figure out if you want to fall, or how and when you're gonna land, and i gotta tell you, friends, to stop thinking about the landing, because it's all about falling.Collection: Fall
It's like, you know how sometimes you see a really sexy baby? Wait.Collection: Sexy
He never wears a watch (his own rebellion against time, against watching).Collection: Watches
I'm not a very happy person," I told him."But sometimes I can trick myself into thinking I am.Collection: Thinking
I have taken advantage of other people's weaknesses in order to cover my own.Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Senior
i wish i were someone else, even though i know i'll never, ever be able to get away from what i've done and what's been done to me.Collection: Wish
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 CooperCollection: Sleep
Now, I don't believe in doing hugs halfway. I can't stand people who try to hug without touching. A hug should be a full embrace - as I wrap my arms around Tony, I am not just holding him, but also trying to lift off his troubles for a moment so that the only thing he can feel is my presence, my support.Collection: Believe
I kiss her and she finds the light switch and turns it off, and we're just lit in Pepsi-can colors and it's like we've finally found this other kind of conversation, this conversation in gestures and pulls and pushes and breaths and grasps and teases and glimmers and rubs and expectation.Collection: Kissing
it's the belief, not the words, that mean everything. it's the floating.Collection: Mean
I can't pretend to know what love is. It just is.Collection: Love Is
In the next election, I'm voting for your mom to be the next God.Collection: Mom
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?Collection: Love
Because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore.Collection: Self
We switch to another language-- not our invented language or the language we've learned from our lives. As we walk further up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us time to think and move. We can be here and elsewhere at the same time.Collection: Moving
this might be the happy ending without the endingCollection: Might
I asked you what you wanted and you said you didn't want anything. And I told you I wasn't planning on giving you anything; I was planning on giving you something.Collection: Giving
I think that if you were somehow able to measure the weight of human kindness, it would have weighed more on 9/11 than it ever had. On 9/11, all the hatred and murder could not compare with the weight of love, of bravery, of caring. I have to believe that.Collection: Kindness
That air. The air afterwards. I wanted to breathe it in. It felt right to breathe it in. Because we were breathing them in, weren't we? And the building. We were breathing it all in. And I thought, there's a part of this that's actually a part of me now. I now have that responsibility. I am alive, and I am breathing, and I can do the things this dust can't do.Collection: Responsibility
I don't get this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired.Collection: People
In my experience, desire is desire, love is love.Collection: Love Is
If smart people are parodying it, that's a sure sign that some less smart people are believing it.Collection: Smart
A sound waiting to be a word.Collection: Waiting
Are you a vegetarian?' I ask, based on the evidence in front of me. She nods. 'Why?' 'Because I have this theory that when we die, every animal that we've eaten has a chance at eating us back. So if you're a carnivore and you add up all the animals you've eaten--well, that's a long time in purgatory, being chewed.' 'Really?' She laughs. 'No. I'm just sick of the question. I mean, I'm a vegetarian because I think it's wrong to eat other sentient creatures. And it sucks for the environment.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Special
We always loved to say 'If I'd had a Monday-morning class, I never would have met you'. Or 'If you'd been reading something else, none of this would have happened'. We didn't believe in fate, but we believed in serendipity. We felt very lucky.Collection: Monday
It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, 'I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me'. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing.Collection: Sorry
I don't even know what I'm looking for, although I hope I'll know it if I find it along the way. Sometimes I want to simplify my life into a simple bare thing. And other times I want to complicate it so thoroughly that everything I touch will become bound in some way to me. I've become quite aware of my contradictions, but there's no true resolution in that.Collection: Simple
Dash is for sure straight!" Boomer announced. "He has a super-pretty ex-girlfriend named Sofia, who I think he still has a thing for, and also, in seventh grade, there was a game of spin the bottle and it was my turn and I spun and it landed at Dash, but he wouldn't let me kiss him.Collection: Girlfriend
This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.Collection: Writing
hubris, n. Every time I call you mine, I feel like I'm forcing it, as if saying it can make it so. As if I'm reminding you, and reminding the universe: mine. As if that one word from me could have that kind of power.Collection: Kind
scapegoat, n. I think our top two are: 1. Not enough coffee. 2. Too much coffee.Collection: Coffee
and when he catches me off guard and says 'i love you' i catch him off guard and say 'i need your help.Collection: Love You
there was a time before you but I can't remember it now a time before your beauty and I were formally introduced I'm sure I lived without you but I don't remember how can't imagine living without these feelings you've produced just one glance and my life was redrawn just one word and my vocabulary changed I asked the time and you said 'what's the hurry?' you asked my name and I almost forgotCollection: Vocabulary
And yes, Holden would keep those kids from falling off the cliff, but WHO WOULDN'T? Does she think I would just fold my arms or give them a pat on the back before they sailed headfirst to the ground? We are all catchers, and it's sad that she doesn't see it. Instead she sees the PHONINESS, she deplores the world even after I point out that I am in it.Collection: Fall
teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say "I wish someone would drop a bomb on this school right now," that means they have arranged for a nuclear arsenal to be emptied onto the school and should be immediately suspended and ridiculed. if they say they were merely coming up with a joking excuse to postpone a bio test, reply that all jokes are funny, and that since dropping a bomb on a school is not funny, it is therefore not a joke.Collection: Teacher
We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual. A—” “Do I really have to find a word for it?” Kyle interrupts. “Can’t it just be what it is?” “Of course,” I say, even though in the bigger world I’m not so sure. The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own. We pause for a moment. I wonder if that’s all—if he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, “You see, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.” “Nobody does,” I assure him.Collection: Stupid
My pride shut me up, my hurt shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.Collection: Hurt