Background Image

...

I Have No Idea How He Knows When I Need Him. We Can Go Weeks Without Speaking, And Then, When My Blue Moods Threaten To Turn Black, He Will Show Up And Tell Me My Moods Are Azure Indigo Cerulean Cobalt Periwinkle And Suddenly The Blue Will Not Seem So Dark, More Like The Color Of A Noon-bright Sky. He Brings The Sun.

-David Levithan

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Have No Idea

David Levithan

...

I Have No Idea How He Knows When I Need Him. We Can Go Weeks Without Speaking, And Then, When My Blue Moods Threaten To Turn Black, He Will Show Up And Tell Me My Moods Are Azure Indigo Cerulean Cobalt Periwinkle And Suddenly The Blue Will Not Seem So Dark, More Like The Color Of A Noon-bright Sky. He Brings The Sun.

Views: 6

Topic

More From David Levithan

I Wonder If It's Possible To Start A New Relationship Without Hurting Someone Else.

New Relationship

There Is No Reason That We Should Ever Be Ashamed Of Our Bodies Or Ashamed Of Our Love.

Then I Go In The Den And Turn On Law & Order, Since The Only Thing I Can Really Count On In Life Is That Whenever I Turn On The Tv, There Will Be A Law & Order Episode.

When Things Break, It's Not The Actual Breaking That Prevents Them From Getting Back Together Again. It's Because A Little Piece Gets Lost -- The Two Remaining Ends Couldn't Fit Together Even If They Wanted To. The Whole Shape Has Changed.

Even When I Detach, I Care. You Can Be Separate From A Thing And Still Care About It. If I Wanted To Detach Completely, I Would Move My Body Away. I Would Stop The Conversation Midsentence. I Would Leave The Bed. Instead, I Hover Over It For A Second. I Glance Off In Another Direction. But I Always Glance Back At You.

But Whether Or Not You Are Here, You Are Here—because These Words Are For You, And They Wouldn't Exist If You Weren't Here In Some Way.

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.

So What Else Can I Tell You?" I Asked. "i Mean, To Get You To Reveal Lily To Me.

Are You Going To Be Playing For The Pure Thrill Of Unreluctant Desire?

I Learn About The Highs And Lows Of Living With The Same Mother For Your Entire Life, About How No One Can Make You Angrier, But How You Can't Really Love Anyone More.

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.

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.

You Can't Deny That There's Something Between Us." "no. There Is. When I Saw You Today--i Didn't Know I'd Been Waiting For You Until You Were There. And Then All Of That Waiting Rushed Through Me In A Second. That's Something... But I Don't Know If It's Certainty.

And Just Like That, The Universe Goes Wrong. Just Like That, All The Enormity Seems To Shrink Into A Ball And Float Away From My Reach. I Feel It, And She Doesn't. Or I Feel It, And She Won't.

It Feels Like We’ve Stepped Outside Of Time. Even Though There Is No Such Place.

Only Adj. Thats The Dilemma Isn't It? When You're Single, There's The Sadness And Joy Of Only Me. And When You're Paired, There's The Sadness And Joy Of Only You.

It Doesn't Have To Be On Valentine's Day. It Doesn't Have To Be By The Time You Turn Eighteen Or Thirty-three Or Fifty-nine. It Doesn't Have To Conform To Whatever Is Usual. It Doesn't Have To Be Kismet At Once, Or Rhapsody By The Third Date. It Just Has To Be. In Time. In Place. In Spirit. It Just Has To Be.

People Are Always Separable.

I Close My Eyes. And I Scream. If My Whole World Is Crashing Down Around Me, Then I Am Going To Make The Sound Of The Crashing. I Want To Scream Until All My Bones Break.

Even Though I'm Seventeen, I Guess I Still Thought This Would Always Be True - That There Would Always Be That Lost-and-found, And Not The Lost-and-still-lost That I Am Now Trapped Inside.

Your Humor Is Your Compass And Your Shield. You Can Hone It Into A Weapon Or You Can Pull Its Strands Out To Make Your Very Own Cotton-candy Blanket. You Can’t Exist On A Diet Of Humor Alone, But You Can’t Exist On A Diet Without It, Either.

And When He Catches Me Off Guard And Says 'i Love You' I Catch Him Off Guard And Say 'i Need Your Help.

He Is Much Stronger Than I Think I Am. He Is Mischievous, Outgoing, Ready To Soar Through The Clouds, While I Often Feel Like The Cloud Itself.

If You Want To Live Within The Definition Of Your Own Truth, You Have To Choose To Go Through The Initially Painful And Ultimately Comforting Process Of Finding It.

Why Won't They Leave Me Alone? Don't They Realize I Have A Tinder Heart And A Paper Body And That Any Spark Will Turn Me Straight To Ash?

Every You, Every Me. Fractals. Fractures.

I Just Needed To Realize That Style Was Like Personality - It Didn't Always Have To Be Consistent; It Just Had To Be Something You Lived With.

What A Strange Phrase — –not Seeing Other People. As If It’s Been Constructed To Be A Lie. We See Other People All The Time. The Question Is What We Do About It.

Iv. Who Was It Who Invented Size Zero? Who Was It Who Promised That If You Got To A Certain Point You Would No Longer Be?

In The Next Election, I'm Voting For Your Mom To Be The Next God.

Every Two People Cause And Intersection. Every Person Alters The World.

But Death Is Not Freedom. For A Moment, It Can Look Like Freedom. But Then It's Death. Anything. Something. Nothing.

I Am Not Dangerous. Only The Stories Are Dangerous. Only The Fictions We Create, Especially When They Become Expectations.

The Minute I Knew I Was In Love Was The Minute When There Was No Question About It.

I Couldn't Remember Ordinary Moments, Only The Ones That Had Made An Impression. Ordinary Moments Were The Ones That Fell Away First.

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.

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.

By The Time I Got There, You’d Already Decided. And I Quickly Decided To Let You Decide. You Were Already Seeing The Rooms As Ours, And That Was Enough For Me.

All This Hoping For Something- Or Someone- That's Maybe Hopeless. I'm Having A Hard Time Processing What I Am Supposed To Believe, Or If I'm Even Supposed To. There Is Too Much Information, And I Don't Like A Lot Of It.

Hoping For Something

My Pride Shut Me Up, My Hurt Shut Me Down, And Together They Ganged Up On My Hope And Let Her Get Away.

I Love You,” She Says. “i Love You,” I Say. And Then We Hang Up, Because Nothing Else Needs To Be Said After That. I Want To Give Zara Her Life Back. Even If I Feel I Deserve Something Like This, I Don’t Deserve It At Her Expense.

As Long As We Can Conjure, Who Needs Anything Else? As Long As We Can Agree On The Magical Lie And Be Happy, What More Is There To Ask For? “i Loved You From That Moment On,” I Say. “i Loved You From That Moment On,” You Agree.

There Are Things I Miss," You Said. "but If I Didn't Have You, I'd Miss More.

I Am A Firm Believer In Serendipity- All The Random Pieces Coming Together In One Wonderful Moment, When Suddenly You See What Their Purpose Was All Along.

The World Is Quieter Now. It Is Never Quiet, But It Can Get Quieter. What Strange Creatures We Are, To Find Silence Peaceful, When Permanent Silence Is The Thing We Most Dread. Nighttime Is Not That. Nighttime Still Rustles, Still Creaks And Whispers And Trembles In Its Throat. It Is Not Darkness We Fear, But Our Own Helplessness Within It. How Merciful To Have Been Granted The Other Senses.

I Want To Write My Life. I Want To Be Able To Write My Life. You Are A Second Away From Saying It. You Have No Idea How Much I Love You.

We Were Painting By Numbers, Starting With The Greens. Because That Happened To Be Our Favorite Color. And This, We Figured, Had To Mean Something.

The Tenderness Between Two People Can Turn The Air Tender, The Room Tender, Time Itself Tender. As I Step Out Of Bed And Slip On An Oversize Shirt, Everything Around Me Feels Like It's The Temperature Of Happiness.

Life Tells You To Take The Elevator, But Love Tells You To Take The Stairs.

It Doesn't Feel Like A Date. It Doesn't Feel Like Friendship. It Feels Like Something That Fell Off The Tightrope But Hasn't Yet Hit The Net.

I Hope Suffering Don't Exist.

How Do You Commemorate A Year? A Paper Anniversary, But We Are The Words Written Down, Not The Paper.

You Wanna-i Dunno-get Coffee Or Something Sometime?

Part Of Love Is Letting A Person Be Who They Want To Be

And Maybe It Is Only By Finding Yourself That You Can Feel The True Intensity Of Becoming Close To Another Person.

Finding Yourself

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.

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.

I Am Always Amazed By People Who Know Something Is Wrong But Still Insist On Ignoring It, As If That Will Somehow Make It Go Away. They Spare Themselves The Confrontation, But End Up Boiling In Resentment Anyway.

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.

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.

If You Tell Me, I Will Leave You Alone," I Said. "and If You Don't Tell Me, I Am Going To Grab The Nearest Ghostwritten James Patterson Romance Novel And I Am Going To Follow You Through This Store Reading It Out Loud Until You Relent. Would You Prefer Me To Read From Daphne's Three Tender Months With Harold Or Cindy And John's House Of Everlasting Love? I Guarantee, Your Sanity And Your Indie Street Cred Won't Last A Chapter. And They Are Very, Very Short Chapters." Now I Could See The Fright Beneath The Defiance.

Why Is It So Much Easier To Talk To A Stranger? Why Do We Feel We Need To Disconnect In Order To Connect? If I Wrote "dear Sofia" Or "dear Boomer" Or "dear Lily's Great-aunt" At The Top Of This Postcard, Wouldn't That Change The Words That Followed? Of Course It Would. But The Question Is: When I Wrote "dear Lily," Was That Just A Version Of "dear Myself"? I Know It Was More Than That. But It Was Also Less Than That, Too

I Am Starting To Get Tired Of Relying On Words.

Isaac Knows How Stupid I Find These Things, And He Finds Them Just As Stupid As I Do. Like Lol. Now, If There's Anything Stupider Than Buddy Lists, It's Lol. If Anyone Ever Uses Lol With Me, I Rip My Computer Right Out Of The Wall And Smash It Over The Nearest Head. I Mean, It's Not Like Anyone's Laughing Out Loud About The Things They Lol. I Think It Should Be Spelled Loll, Like What A Lobotomized Person's Tongue Does. Loll. Loll. I Can't Think Any More. Loll. Loll!

This Is My Life, I Think. I Am An Accumulation Of Objects.

We Wish We Could Have Been There For You. We Didn't Have Many Role Models Of Our Own--we Latched On To The Foolish Love Of Oscar Wilde And The Well-versed Longing Of Walt Whitman Because Nobody Else Was There To Show Us An Untortured Path. We Were Going To Be Your Role Models. We Were Going To Give You Art And Music And Confidence And Shelter And A Much Better World. Those Who Survived Lived To Do This. But We Haven't Been There For You. We've Been Here. Watching As You Become The Role Models.

Maybe That's What History Is, You Go From One I Can't Believe It The Next. And Sometimes The I Can't Believe Its Are Good, And Sometimes They're Bad. But The Sum Total Of Positive Ones Always Outweighs The Negative Ones.

I Was Horribly Bookish, To The Point Of Coming Right Out And Saying It, Which I Knew Was Not Socially Acceptable. I Particularly Loved The Adjective Bookish, Which I Found Other People Used About As Often As Ramrod Or Chum Or Teetotaler.

Every Time You Love Someone, You Put Not Just Your Faith In Them, But Your Faith In Everything To The Test.

He Never Wears A Watch (his Own Rebellion Against Time, Against Watching).

It's Gonna Hurt Because It Matters.

Sharing Truth Is Not The Kind Of Gift That Comes In Wrapping Paper - Ripped Open Once And, There, You're Done. No, This Is A Gift That Must Be Unfolded.

Part Of Growing Up Is Making Sure Your Sense Of Reality Isn't Entirely Grounded In Your Own Mind.

You Don't Realize - The Great Thing About Change Is How Quickly We Get Used To It. So I'm Not Complaining. The More Things Change,the More They Don't Stay The Same. Don't Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise. They Might Not Change Everywhere All At Once - But There Are Moments When The Impossible Becomes The Inevitable, And The Rest Is Just A Matter Of Time.

The Word I Think Of Is Precarious. I Am Struck By How Precarious It All Is. How The Things That Hold Us Are Only As Strong As The Faith We Have In Them.

You Leave The Phone On Beside You As You Fall Asleep. I Sit In My Bed And Listen To Your Breathing, Until I Know You Are Safe, Until I Know You No Longer Need Me For The Night.

I Am Made For Running. Because When You Run, You Could Be Anyone. You Hone Yourself Into A Body, Nothing More Or Less Than A Body. You Respond As A Body, To The Body. If You Are Racing To Win, You Have No Thoughts But The Body's Thoughts, No Goals But The Body's Goals. You Obliterate Yourself In The Name Of Speed. You Negate Yourself In Order To Make It Past The Finish Line.

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?

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.

Losing Yourself

For I Have Never Wanted A Lover, But I Have Always Wanted To Love, And To Be Loved.

I Would Always Wait To Take You Home.

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.

It Was So Much Easier When I Didn't Want Anything. Not Getting What You Want Can Make You Cruel.

Getting What You Want

You Went And Broke Our Lives. You Are So Much Worse Than A Cheater. You Killed Something. And You Killed It When Its Back Was Turned.

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.

It's Only A Game If There Is An Absence Of Meaning. And We've Already Gone Too Far For That.

Her Vulnerability Is Open, But She’s Safe Within It.

I Want To Take Back The Secrets I Told You So I Can Decide Now Whether To Tell Them To You Again. I Want To Take Back The Piece Of Me That Lies In You, To See If I Truly Miss It. I Want To Take Back At Least Half The “i Love You”s, Because It Feels Safer That Way.

But I Guess You Don't See The Planets When You're Staring At The Sun. You Just Get Blinded.

Sorry To Be So Cynical, But This Is New York

What A Horrible Feeling That Is, To Know That If The Disease [aids] Had Primarily Affected Pta Presidents, Or Priests, Or White Teenage Girls, The Epidemic Would Have Been Ended Years Earlier, And Tens Of Thousands, If Not Hundreds Of Thousands Of Lives Would Have Been Saved.

Stanchion, N. I Don't Want To Be The Strong One, But I Don't Want To Be The Weak One Either. Why Does It Feel Like It's Always One Or The Other? When We Embrace, One Of Us Is Always Holding The Other A Little Tighter.

This Might Be The Happy Ending Without The Ending

For Whatever Reason, We Like To Focus On The 2 Percent That's Different, And Most Of The Conflict In The World Comes From That.

What I Want Is For What I Want To Actually Matter.

I Preferred To Hang Out With The Dead, Dying, Or Desperate Books - Used We Call Them, In A Way That We'd Never Call A Person, Unless We Meant It Cruelly

He Is Both The Source Of My Happiness And The One I Want To Share It With.

I Am Jealous Of Anyone Who Can Make Other People Care So Much.

What I Learned The Well-documented Difference Between Alone And Lonely The Comfort Of Knowing

Magic Naturally Fades Over Distance. But Proximity - Well, When It Works, Proximity Amplifies Magic.

A Guy Can Do Far Far Worse Than Surrounding Himself With People Who Restore His Faith In Humanity.

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.

Teens Wanted Things That Were Real, That They Connected With, It Doesn't Have To Reflect Reality Directly. They Love 'the Hunger Games' Not Because It's Real In That It Happens, But The Emotions There Are Real, And It's Very Relatable.

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.

Need Is Never A Good Basis For Any Relationship. It Has To Be Much More Than That.

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.

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.

Readers Embrace All Kinds Of Characters As Long As They Are Written With Emotional Truth.

And I'm Moved, It's So Beautiful. Not What I Wrote, But To Have It Given Back Like This. To Have Her Remember The Words And The Tune. To Hear It In Her Voice.

Aloof, Adj. It Has Always Been My Habit, Ever Since Junior High School, To Ask That Question: “what Are You Thinking?” It Is Always An Act Of Desperation, And I Keep On Asking, Even Though I Know It Will Never Work The Way I Want It To.

Ignorance Is Not Bliss. Bliss Is Knowing The Full Meaning Of What You Have Been Given.

..i've Been Trying To Argue Myself Into Thinking These Things Don't Matter, A. Really,i Have. But I've Lost The Argument. And I Can't Keep Having It, When I Know What The Real Answer Is.

After Tiny Has Tried Ballerina Pose, Swing-batter-batter Pose, Pump-up-the-jam Pose, And Top-of-the-mountain-sound-of-music Pose In The Reflection Of The Bean, He Walks Us To A Bench Overlooking Lake Shore Drive.

Jesus Died For Our Sins," Noah Says Solemnly. "what?!?" I Reply, Choking Back My Thoughts. "i Was Just Seeing If You Were Listening.

And I Told You: I Think Of A Photograph You Took Of Me, Up In Montreal. You Told Me To Jump In The Air, So In The Picture, My Feet Are Off The Ground. Later, I Asked You Why You Wanted Me To Do That, And You Told Me It Was The Only Way To Get Me To Forget About The Expression On My Face. You Were Right. I Am Completely Unposed, Completely Genuine. In My Mind’s Eye, I Picture Myself Like That, Reacting To You.

There Are Few Things Harder Than Being Born Into The Wrong Body.

I Want To Talk To You And Be Random With You And Be Ridiculous With You.

Fate Has A Strange Way Of Making Plans.

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.

Lasting Impressions

I'm A Firm Believer That Every Person, Young Or Old, Has At Least One Good Story To Tell.

Measure The Hope Of That Moment, That Feeling. Everything Else Will Be Measured Against It.

It Is Not Desire. Instead It Is Something Deeper. I Don't Want To Be With Him Constantly And Forever. I Want To Be With Him For The Moment, And I Want The Moments To Go On Forever.

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.

It’s As Simple As That. Simple And Complicated, As Most True Things Are.

Why Do We Feel The Need To Disconnect In Order To Connect?

I Want You To Be Honest With Me. Even If It Hurts. Although I Would Prefer For It Not To Hurt.

Breathing, N You Had Asthma As A Child, Had To Carry Around An Inhaler. But When You Grew Older, It Went Away. You Could Run For Miles And It Was Fine. Sometimes I Worry That This Is Happening To Me In Reverse. The Older I Get, The More I Lose My Ability To Breathe.

I Cannot Think Of A Single Word To Describe What We Feel. I Think We All Feel It, To Varying Degrees. Perhaps In Some Other Language There Is A Word For 'the World Is Terribly Wrong.' That Feeling Of Stun And Unbelief And Abandonment And Shock And Horror And Distress.

There Has To Be A Moment At The Beginning When You Wonder Whether You’re In Love With The Person Or In Love With The Feeling Of Love Itself.

Love Me Less, But Love Me For A Long Time

I Have Already Spent Roughly Five Thousand Hours Asleep Next To You. This Has To Mean Something.

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.

It's Like, You Know How Sometimes You See A Really Sexy Baby? Wait.

You Make It A Production. Slam Doors. Knock Things Over. Scream. But I Just Leave. Even If I'm Still Standing There, I Leave. I Am Refusing You. I Am Denying You. I Am An Adjective That Is Quickly Turning Into A Noun.

You’d Think That Silence Would Be Peaceful. But Really, It’s Painful.

Just Because A Person Is Beautiful Doesn't Mean There's No Soul Beneath. Doesn't Mean That Person Hasn't Suffered Like Everyone Else, Doesn't Mean They Don't Hope To Still Be A Good Human Being In An Awful World.

I Measure The Moment In The Heartbeats I Skip

I'm Always Standing On The Edge Of Something Bad.

Standing On The Edge

My Main Piece Of Advice Would Be Dont Worry About Being Published - Just Write A Really Good Book, But Also Dont Be Afraid To Write A Bad Book. Give Yourself Permission To Fail, And Dont Be Afraid.

That's The Problem With Having A Moral Code. We Want To Destroy The Jerkish Part Of The Jerks, But We Want To Save The Human Being Underneath.

You Existed. You Existed Now As A Fractal. Definition: A Fractal Is Generally A Rough Or Fragmented Geometric Shape That Can Be Broken Into Parts, Each Of Which Is (at Least Approximately) A Reduced-size Copy Of The Whole. Maybe I Was A Fractal. Maybe The Photographer Was A Fractal. Maybe We Were All Fractals.

Geometric Shapes

I Used To Think That When I Got Older, The World Would Make So Much More Sense. But You Know What? The Older I Get, The More Confusing It Is To Me. The More Complicated It Is. Harder. You’d Think We’d Be Getting Better At It. But There’s Just More And More Chaos. The Pieces—they’re Everywhere. And Nobody Knows What To Do About It. I Find Myself Grasping, Nick. You Know That Feeling? That Feeling When You Just Want The Right Thing To Fall Into The Right Place, Not Only Because It’s Right, But Because It Will Mean That Such A Thing Is Still Possible? I Want To Believe In That.

Love Weaves Itself From Hundreds Of Threads.

They Never Played Games With Each Other, They Never Had Tow Worry Where They Stood, Because If Either Of Them Had A Moment Of Wavering, The Other Would Say I Love You And Would Mean It And All Doubts Were Forgiven Because In This One Case It Was Found That Love Conquers All.

I Say Good-bye To Hope, But I Also Say Good-bye To Hope's Disappointment.

Because That's The Thing About Mean People: They Make You Think That The World Will Never Work, That There Are Divides That You Will Fall Into If You Approach. It Takes A Whole Lot Of Good People To Fill In The Breach Created By A Single Mean One.

Healthy, Adj. There Are Times When I'm Alone That I Think, This Is It. This Is Actually The Natural State. All I Need Are My Thoughts And My Small Acts Of Creation And My Ability To Go Or Do Whatever I Want To Go Or Do. I Am Myself, And That Is The Point. Pairing Is A Social Construction. It Is By No Means Necessary For Everyone To Do It. Maybe I'm Better Like This. Maybe I Could Live My Life In My Own World, And Then Simply Leave It When It's Time To Go.

There Is Certainty In A Ring. The Non-ending, The Non-beginning. The Ongoing. The Way It Holds On To You Not Because It's Fastened Or Stretched Or Adhered. It Holds On Because It Fits.

If I Lose It Now, I Will Lose You, Too. I Know That. I Hate It.

The Boy I Loved Didn't Know I Existed. Then Again, He Was Obsessed With Camus, So He Didn't Know If Any Of Us Existed.

I Still Don’t Know If This Is A Good Quality Or A Bad One, To Be Able To Be In The Moment And Then Step Out Of It.

Having Someone Think Of Me That Way Was Like Discovering A New Window In The Room I'd Lived In All My Life.

This Is What You Do Now To Give Your Day Topography--scan The Boxes, Read The News, See The Chain Of Your Friends Reporting About Themselves, Take The 140-character Expository Bursts And Sift Through For The Information You Need. It's A Highly Deceptive World, One That Constantly Asks You To Comment But Doesn't Really Care What You Have To Say. The Illusion Of Participation Can Sometimes Lead To Participation. But More Often Than Not, It Only Leads To More Illusion, Dressed In The Guise Of Reality.

This Is Not Something Insignificant. This Is Real. This Is Happening, And This Is Ours.

People Read Vampire Novels And Say, Oh I Want To Read Another Vampire Novel. People Read Fantasy, And Theyre Like, Oh I Love Fantasy. I Dont Know That People Are Necessarily Finishing Hunger Games And Immediately Wanting To Read Another Dystopian Tale.

Deep Down? That Sounds Like Settling To Me. You Shouldn't Have To Venture Deep Down In Order To Get To Love.

...he Hopes That Maybe It'll Make People A Little Less Scared Of Two Boys Kissing Than They Were Before, And A Little More Welcoming To The Idea That All People Are, In Fact, Born Equal, No Matter Who They Kiss Or Screw, No Matter What Dreams They Have Or Love They Give.

But There Was Something About You That Made Me Think Of Sparks And Motion.

Neophyte, N. There Are Millions Upon Millions Of People Who Have Been Through This Before-- Why Is It That No One Can Give My Good Advice?

If You Want To Be Loved, Be A Lovable. It's A Good Place To Start.

If You Let The World In, You Open Yourself Up To The World. Even If The World Doesn't Know That You're There.

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.

We Pencil-sketch Our Previous Life So We Can Contrast It To The Technicolor Of The Moment.

I Find My Greatest Strengths In Wanting Ti Be Strong. I Find My Greatest Bravery In Deciding To Be Brave.

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.

We Remember What It Was Like To Meet Someone New. We Remember What It Was Like To Grant Someone Possibility. You Look Out From Your Own World And Then You Step Into His, Not Really Knowing What You’ll Find There, But Hoping It Will Be Something Good. Both Ryan And Avery Are Doing This. You Step Into His World And You Don’t Even Realize Your Loneliness Is Missing. You’ve Left It Behind, And You Don’t Notice Because You Have No Desire To Turn Back.

He’ll Have To Prove It To You. Every Day, He’ll Have To Prove He’s Worthy Of You. And If He Doesn’t, That’s It. But I Think He Will.

After A While, You Have To Be At Peace With The Fact That You Simple Are

School Is School-she Wants It To Be Over, But She's Afraid Of It Being Over, Because Then She'll Have To Figure Out What Comes Next.

With All Due Respect, If You’re Forty-three, Then I’m A Fetus.

You See, Dash -- I Was Never The Girl In Your Head. And You Were Never The Boy In My Head. I Think We Both Knew That. It's Only When We Try To Make The Girl Or Boy In Our Head Real That The True Trouble Comes. I Did That With Carlos, And It Was A Bad Failure. Be Careful What You're Doing, Because No One Is Ever Who You Want Them To Be. And The Less You Really Know Them, The More Likely You Are To Confuse Them With The Girl Or Boy In Your Head.

My Lines All Curve. I Tend To Connect The Wrong Dots.

When You Need To Hold Onto Something, You Should. Whatever Gets You Through, Take It.

We Love And We Feel And We Try And We Hope.

In Small Letters, Someone Has Written Never Forget On One Of The Slats. I Know It's Supposed To Be A Pledge, But It Feels Like A Curse. Don't We Have To Forget Some Of It? Don't We Have To Forget This Feeling? If We Don't, How Will We Live?

If Smart People Are Parodying It, That's A Sure Sign That Some Less Smart People Are Believing It.

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.

I Have Learned How 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.

Danger Comes In Many Forms, I Suppose. For Some People, It Might Be Jumping Off A Bridge Or Climbing Impossible Moutains. For Others, It Could Be A Tawdry Love Affair Or Telling Off A Mean-looking Bus Driver Because He Doesn't Like To Stop For Noisy Teenagers. It Could Be Cheating At Cards Or Eating A Peanut Even Though You're Allergic. For Me, Danger Might Be Getting Out From The Protective Cloak Of My Family And Venturing Into The World More Of My Own, Even Though I Don't Know What- Or Who- Awaits Me.

Self-esteem Can Be So Exhausting. I Want To Cut My Hair, Change My Clothes, Erase The Pimple From The Near-tip Of My Nose, And Strengthen My Upper-arm Definition, All In The Next Hour.

We Hold Hands As We Walk Through Town. If Anybody Notices, Nobody Cares. I Know We All Like To Think Of The Heart As The Center Of The Body But At This Moment, Every Conscious Part Of Me Is In The Hand That He Holds. It Is Through That Hand, That Feeling, That I Experience Everything Else.

It Is Hard To Stop Seeing Your Son As A Son And To Start Seeing Him As A Human Being. It Is Hard To Stop Seeing Your Parents As Parents And To Start Seeing Them As Human Beings. It's A Two-sided Transition, And Very Few People Manage It Gracefully.

Love Is The Higher Law.

Because Sometimes You Just Have To Dance Like A Madman In The Self-help Section Of Your Local Bookstore.

It's The Belief, Not The Words, That Mean Everything. It's The Floating.

There Is A Part Of Childhood That Is Childish, And A Part That Is Sacred. Suddenly We Are Touching The Sacred Part -- Running To The Shoreline, Feeling The First Cold Burst Of Water On Our Ankles, Reaching Into The Tide To Catch At Shells Before They Ebb Away From Our Fingers. We Have Returned To A World That Is Capable Of Glistening, And We Are Wading Deeper Within It.

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.

She Is Carrying Herself Through The Day, And It’s Not An Easy Task.

You Have To Trust The Words. They Do Not Create Anything More Than Themselves.

Hello, My Name Is Ees Lebkuchen Spice, And I Vant To Show You My Coooooookies.

Told Her She Was Beautiful. Didn't Give Up When She Didn't Believe Me.

...because If You Can Make Yourself Happy In The Rain Then You're Doing Pretty Alright In Life.

Make Yourself Happy

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.

Seven Wonders Of The World And I Have To Ask For An Eighth Fill A Bottle With Some Prayers And Spend Them On Hope Create An Easy Route Just So I Can Complicate Send My Heart Down That Slippery Slope

I Barely Notice Colors Unless I Taste Them. Not The Yellows Or The Greens. I Taste The Deeper Blues. The Darker Reds.

But If I Didn’t Want To Be Alone, Then Why Didn’t I Want To Be With Anyone Else?

Wants To Be Alone

Breathtaking, Adj. Those Moments When We Kiss And Surrender For An Hour Before We Say A Single Word.

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.

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?

I’ve Found That People Tend To Trust Other People Who Dress Like Them.

Trending Author

Douglas Hofstadter

Sheila Jackson Lee

Category