Do you wonder why we wander?” Cal had asked. It was the night of the first snow; you could hear the branches bending and the icicles falling outside the window, beyond the wall. They were warmth together. They were hot breath and blankets and wrapping themselves

— David Levithan

Dreaming and loving and screwing. None of these are identities. Maybe when other people look at us, but not to ourselves. We are so much more complicated than that.

— David Levithan

Either way, you were connected. By your desires. By your defiance. By the simple, complicated fact of who you were.

— David Levithan

Elijah is inexplicably moved by the broken columns and fragmented floors. He cannot help but find a meaning and a message in their poverty of stature. This is what remains, he thinks. It seems a valuable lesson on a day when card catalogs are dying, communications are deleted, and buildings crumble under the weight of society’s expectations.

— David Levithan

Elliptical, adj. The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It’s as much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it happen.

— David Levithan

Enlightenment is scary. Sometimes things look better in the dark.

— David Levithan

Even though you're not my type, gender wise, you're certainly my type, person-wise.

— David Levithan

Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends—an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels—and it is that—comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there.

— David Levithan

Exemplar, n. It's always something we have to negotiate-the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done. You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath.

— David Levithan

Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don’t do wrong, and that becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where that confidence lasts longer than the dance. Seconds at first. Then minutes. Then maybe it’ll be there when you’re walking into a party, or meeting people after a show. You know you have something desirable, and you know you can move.

— David Levithan