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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.

-David Levithan

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What A Horrible Feeling

David Levithan

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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.

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Love Is Tied To Truth. I Think Of Them As Unhappily Conjoined Twins.

In My Experience, Desire Is Desire, Love Is Love.

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.

I Want To Kiss Her Without Counting The Seconds. I Want To Hold Her So Long That I Get To Know Her Skin. I Want, I Want, I Want.

I'll See You Later, He Says, And As He Does, He Runs His Finger Briefly Over My Wrist. It Passes Over Me Like Air, And Makes Me Shiver Like A Kiss.

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

I Know It Was More Than That. But It Was Also Less Than That, Too.

She Asked Me What Was Wrong, And I Told Her I Had To End It. She Was Surprised, And Asked My Why I Thought So. I Told Her It Wasn't A Thought, More A Feeling, Like I Couldn't Breathe And Knew I Had To Get Some Air. It Was A Survival Instinct, I Told Her. She Said It Was Time For Dinner. Then She Sat Me Down And Told Me Not To Worry. She Said Moments Like This Were Like Waking Up In The Middle Of The Night: You're Scared, Your'e Disoriented, And You're Completely Convinced You're Right. But Then You Stay Awake A Little Longer And You Realize Things Aren't As Fearful As They Seem.

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

You Could Be The Leaf That Never Falls From The Tree You Could Be The Sun That Never Leaves The Sky This Might Be The Happy Ending Without The Ending This Might Be A Reason To Try

Things Rarely Get Fixed The Way They Need To Be.

I Am Starting To Get Tired Of Relying On Words.

That's What The Voices In Your Head Are For, To Get You Through The Silent Parts.

Once Time Is Lit, It Will Burn Whether Or Not You're Breathing It In. Even After Smoke Becomes Air, There Is The Memory Of Smoke. I Am Seeing As If By The Light Of A Match, A Glimpse Of My Life And Having It Feel Right.

This Isn't Even Something I've Feared, Because I Never Knew It Was A Possibility.

The Moment You Fall In Love Feels Like It Has Centuries Behind It, Generations - All Of Them Rearranging Themselves So This Precise, Remarkable Intersection Could Happen. In Your 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 Just Now Arriving At The Place You Were Always Meant To Be.

Falling In Love

I Couldn't Fault Her For Believing, Because I Had To Imagine I Was Nice To Have That Illusion Still Intact.

Please May This Not Be A Game. Please May This Not Be A Game. Because If It’s A Game, I Know I’m Going To Lose.

I Find I Very Rarely Live Up To My Words. And Since You Know Me Primarily Through My Words, There Are Oh So Many Ways I Can Disappoint.

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.

I Wake Up Feverish, Sore, Uncomfortable. Is It Sickness Or Is It Heartbreak? I Can't Tell. The Thermometer Says I'm Normal, But I'm Clearly Not.

I Hope That George Doesn't Internalize Her Scare Tactics. I Want To Argue With Her, Tell Her That "sins Of The Flesh" Is Just A Control Mechanism -- If You Demonize A Person's Pleasure, Then You Can Control His Or Her Life. I Can't Say How Many Times This Tool Has Been Wielded Against Me, In A Variety Of Forms. But I See No Sin In A Kiss. I Only See Sin In The Condemnation.

This Is As Much A Part Of My Story As Anything Else. Friendship Is Love As Much As Any Romance.

It's Hard To Answer A Question You Haven't Been Asked. It's Hard To Show You Tried Unless You End Up Succeeding.

It Was A Mistake," You Said. But The Cruel Thing Was, It Felt Like The Mistake Was Mine, For Trusting You.

That's The Question, Isn't It?" You Said One Night. "does Death Bring Freedom, Or Is It The End Of Freedom?

I Would Always Wait To Take You Home.

I Know There Are Epic Tales Of Romance, Where Love Means You're Supposed To Die. Where It's All About Sacrifice. But I Don't Want To Die. I Don't Want Stephen To Die. I'm Looking For The Scenario Where We Both Get To Live. Where We Can Continue This Marvel That Is Love And Discovery And Trust.

Maybe Your History Just Repeats And Repeats Until It Batters You Enough To Snap The Seams That Hold You Together

Be Careful What You're Doing, Because No One Is Ever Who You Want Them To Be.

It's Almost Heartening To Think That The Attachment You Have Can Define Your Perception As Much As Any Other Influence.

I Feel The Universe Is Telling Me Something. And It Doesn't Even Matter If It's True Or Not. What Matters Is That I Feel It, And Believe It.

I Had Gotten So Used To Being Alone, But Never Entirely Used To It. Never Used To It Enough To Stop Wanting The Alternative.

I Am Breathing. In Dreams, We Never Bother To Breathe.

Being With Someone For Over A Year Can Mean That You Love Them … But It Can Also Mean You’re Trapped.

I Know I Should Just Leave. Just Go. Because There's A Point Where A Mistake Turns Into A Big Mistake, And I Should Probably Come To My Senses Before I Get There.

How Can You Spend Hours Every Day Trying In Small Ways To Figure Out Who You Are, Then Have A Near-stranger Give You A Sentence Of Yourself That Says It Better Than You Ever Could?

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.

Two Infinities: The One That Stretches To The Beginning But Never Touches-when You Halve And Halve And Halve, Infinitely-and Then The One That Spreads Out Into The Endless, Endless Future, The Endless, Endless, Distance.the Set Of Infinities That Is Itself Infinite.

I Wish I Could Remember The Moment When I Was A Kid And I Discovered That The Letters Linked Into Words, And That The Words Linked To Real Things. What A Revelation That Must Have Been. We Don't Have The Words For It, Since We Hadn't Yet Learned The Words. It Must Have Been Astonishing, To Be Given The Key To The Kingdom And See It Turn In Our Hands So Easily.

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.

He Was Attractive. I Knew That. And I Knew That Attractive People Always Got Away With Things.

What's The Big Deal With France? How Come Everyone Wants To Go There? Let Me Tell You About France. Their Music Sucks. Their Movies Suck. Their Berets Suck. Their Croissants Are Pretty Good, But The Place Overall Still Sucks.my Family Went There Once On The Way To Visit Dad's Homeland Family. Eurodisney. Need I Say More?

So What Do You Have To Confess Now?" I Don't Know Why I'm Saying Any Of This, Except That Is The Truth. "i'm Confessing That I Don't Know If I'm Ready For This." "what Is 'this'?" "being Open. Being Hurt. Liking. Not Being Liked. Seeing The Flicker On. Seeing The Flicker Off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.

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

I Was Attempting To Write The Story Of My Life. It Wasn't So Much About Plot. It Was Much More About Character.

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

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 Don’t Want You To Think I Got Through This Undamaged, Okay? But I’m Learning To Live With It. Because Otherwise, The Damage Is All You Are.

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

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

It Was A Laugh That Came From The Tip Of His Toes, Gaining Force And Soul As It Traveled Through His Body And Out Into The World In Mirthful Bursts. There Wasn't Anything Fake About It; It Was An Amusement Park Of A Laugh, And When It Appeared, You Wanted To Jump On Board.

Yes, Time Can Be Buoyed By Wordlessness, But It Needs To Be Anchored In Words.

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.

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've Worn Black Today, Because I've Heard So Often That It's Supposed To Be Slimming. But Instead I Am This Sphere Of Darkness Submarining Through The Halls.

I Immediately Suspected There Was Much More To It Than Was Being Said.

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.

I'm Not Good At Relationships I Always Manage To Find The Flaws Sometimes In Others But Mostly My Own. I Foretell The Ending Then Go And Create The Cause Save Myself And End Up Alone

Laughter Rarely Lasts Longer Than A Few Seconds, It's True. But How Enjoyable Those Few Seconds Are.

As Sisters, They Probably Have Closer To 99 Percent In Common, But They’re Not About To Recognize That. They’d Rather Fight Over What Kind Of Pet They’re Going To Get … It’s An Argument For Its Own Sake.

What Separates Us From The Animals, What Separates Us From The Chaos, Is Our Ability To Mourn People We’ve Never Met.

In Sliding Doors, The Whole Idea Is That Every Choice You Make, And Every Single Thing That Happens To You Changes The Trajectory Of Your Life, And Once You Are Put On That Trajectory, There Is No Way Back. But Groundhog Day - Which, I Tell Him, Also Happens To Be A Much Better Movie - Says The Opposite. It Says If You Mess Up Or Make The Wrong Choice, You Just Have To Keep At It Until You Do It Right.

I'm Not A Very Happy Person," I Told Him."but Sometimes I Can Trick Myself Into Thinking I Am.

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.

I See No Sin In A Kiss. I Only See Sin In The Condemnation

Feeling Someone Else's Anger Is Bad; Being Left Alone Is Worse.

Ted Is Smart And Good-looking, But He Doesn't Use It To Good Effect, Like A Rich Person That Never Gives To Charity.

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

Even Though It Was Hard To See You, It Was Good To See You.

It Won't Be A Normal Life-i Know That. But It Will Be A Life. A Life Together.

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

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.

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.

It's Goodbye To Some Things. And Hello To Others.

His Books Are Kept On Freestanding Shelves Hung At Different Angles On A Sea-green Wall. They Defy Gravity, As Good Books Should.

The Way You Argued With Me, You Would Have Thought That We Were Debating The Existence Of God Or Whether Or Not We Should Move In Together. These Kinds Of Fights Can Never Be Won – Even If You’re The Victor, You’ve Hurt The Other Person, And There Has To Be Some Loss Associated With That.

Love Weaves Itself From Hundreds Of Threads.

There Is The Sudden. There Is The Eventual. And In Between, There Is The Living.

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.

I'm Swimming In Your Cadences That You Permeate My Very Language.

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

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.

I Mean, What If Love Isn't A Yes-or-no Question? It's Not Either You're In Love Or You're Not. I Mean, Aren't There Different Levels? And Maybe These Things, Like Words And Expectations And Whatever, Don't Go On Top Of The Love. Maybe It's Like A Map, And They All Have Their Own Place, And Then When You See It From The Sky - Whoa.

Tiny: Did Someone Die? Me: Yeah, I Did. He Smiles Again At That. Tiny: Well, Then... Welcome To The Afterlife.

When Distractions Are Manifold, It's Best To Remember What You Are Supposed To Be Doing.

Enlightenment Is Scary. Sometimes Things Look Better In The Dark.

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

Getting What You Want

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.

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

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.

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.

Let Me Hold On To This The Way It Was, Before I Knew Anything Else.

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.

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

There Comes A Time When The Body Takes Over The Life. There Comes A Time When The Body’s Urges, The Body’s Needs, Dictate The Life. You Have No Idea You Are Giving The Body The Key. But You Hand It Over. And Then It’s In Control. You Mess With The Wiring And The Wiring Takes Charge.

Things Are Not Magical Because They've Been Conjured For Us By Some Outside Force. They Are Magical Because We Create Them.

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.

There Was A Pause. I Was Still Scared By Every Gap In Our Conversation, Fearing That This Was It, The Point Where We Had Nothing Left To Say. I Was Still Trying To Impress You, And I Still Wanted To Be Impressed By You, So I Could Pass Along Pieces Of Your Impressiveness To My Friends, Convincing Myself This Was Possible.

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.

But I Still Has Enough Longing For That Concept That I Didn't Want To Dispel It Completely. Meaning: I Didn't Want To Tell Lily That I Felt We'd All Been Duped By Plato And The Idea Of A Soul Mate. Just In Case It Turned Out That She Was Mine.

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

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.

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.

I'm Not In Love With You.

So I Said I Wanted You To Stay, Even Though Nothing Could Stay The Same.

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

But I Had A Feeling I Wasn't Supposed To Find Her That Way. She Was Not A Needle. This Was Not A Haystack. We Were People, And People Had Ways Of Finding Each Other.

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.

With Some Break-ups, All You Can Think About Afterwards Is How Badly It Ended And How Much The Other Person Hurt You. With Others, You Become Sentimental For The Good Times And Lose Track Of What Went Wrong.

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

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

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.

Life Goes On Is A Redundancy. Life Is Defined By Its Going On.

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.

I Am Learning That A Life Isn't Real Unless Someone Else Knows Its Reality. And I Want My Life To Be Real.

I Can Take Everything On Her Face At Face Value, And That's Valuable In A Friend.

There Has To Be A Moment At The Beginning Where You Wonder Whether You’re In Love With The Person Or In Love With The Feeling Of Love Itself. If The Moment Doesn’t Pass, That’s It—you’re Done. And If The Moment Does Pass, It Never Goes That Far. It Stands In The Distance, Ready For Whenever You Want It Back. Sometimes It’s Even There When You Thought You Were Searching For Something Else, Like An Escape Route, Or Your Lovers’ Face.

The World, Right Now, Is Only Us.

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.

You Think You Know Your Possibilities. Then Other People Come Into Your Life And Suddenly There Are So Many More.

Anchor, V.: I Drift, I Drift, I Drift, You Stay.

She Is So Lost In Her Sadness That She Has No Idea How Visible It Is.

Luckily, I Always Travel With A Book, Just In Case I Have To Wait On Line For Santa, Or Some Such Inconvenience.

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.

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.

Without You I Wouldn't Have Been Able To Contain The Hate. I Would Have Used It Against Myself. You're The One Who Helped Me Control It. My Mind Spun Out To Other Things. But It Always Came Back To You.

These Words Are Now Mine, But Soon They’ll Be Ours.

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

My Mother Said I Should Have A 'change Of Scenery.' The Word Scenery Made Be Think Of A Play. And As We Were Driving Around, It Made Sense That Way. Because No Matter How Much The Scenery Changed, We Were Still On The Same Stage.

These Teenager Looks Aren't Going To Last Forever, And That There Are Much Better Foundation To Build A Life Upon Than How Attractive You Are.

Everyone In Our School Has Afterschool Activities. Mine Is Going Home.

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.

I Don’t Want To Know Anything, And I Want To Know It All

This Is What I Never Allowed Myself To Need. And Of Course What I've Been Needing All Along.

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.

Falling In Love

I Had A Sense Then Of How If We Truly Understood How Many Of The Unimportant Things We Do Will End Up Outliving Us, We'd Never Be Able To Go On.

Unimportant Things

But I Think We Were Walking Around Like We Were Invincible. And Maybe That's A Bad Way To Live Your Life. Because You're Not Invincible. Nobody Is. And Maybe Now That We've Learned That, We'll Be Better.

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.

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.

That's It - Hundreds Of Texts And Conversations, Thousands Upon Thousands Of Words Spoken And Sent, All Boiled Down Into A Single Line. Is That What Relationships Become?

Our Lives Change. Our Feelings For Each Other Change. Our Bearings Change. The Song Changes. The Air Changes. The Temperature Of The Shower Changes. Accept This. We Must Accept This.

Sometimes Desire Is Air, Sometimes Desire Is Liquid. And Every Now And Then, When Everything Else Is Air And Liquid, Desire Solidifies, And The Body Is The Magnet That Draws Its Weight.

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.

Knowledge Is The Only Thing I Take With Me When I Go.

I Had Forgotten This About Love: How The Simple Things- The Turn Away, The Turn Towards- Could Be So Complicated, And How The Complicated Things- The Stolen Night, The Right Words- Could Be So Simple.

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.

Sometimes Memory Tricks You. Sometimes Beauty Is Best When It's Distant.

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.

You Spend So Much Time, So Much Effort, Trying To Hold Yourself Together. And Then Everything Falls Apart Anyway.

A Year. A Thousand Kisses. And Now A Thousand One, A Thousand Two. There Are So Many Other Place We Could Have Ended Up, But I Have To Believe None Of Them Would Have Felt This Right. "all I Want Is You" Is Not Entirely True. I Want So Much More, And With You I Think I Can Get It.

You Ask Me What I'm Looking For, And I Outline You. You Don't Recognize The Shape, Offer Other Names. You Say My Time Will Come, And I Hope.

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

Wants To Be Alone

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

I Know The Odds Are All Against Me And I Know You Might Not Feel This Way Too But I Know I Would Rather Die Trying To Know If I Could Mean Something To You

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.

You Can't Actually Have A Romance Between Friends. That Sort Of Defeats The Definition Of The Word "romance." The Word You're Looking For Is "love." It's A Love Between Friends, Just As There's Also Love Between Lovers, Or Possible Lovers, Or Even Ex-lovers. Same Holds True For "bromance" - It's Just A Clever Word Used To Avoid The Word Love, For Straight Boys Who Don't Want That Old-fashioned Taint Of Gayness. Dudes, You Love Each Other. Deal With It.

Serrated, Adj. And You Said, "i'm Not Sure We Can.

There Is No Word For The Recipient Of The Love. There Is Only A Word For The Giver. There Is The Assumption That Lovers Come In Pairs.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

But Isn't This A Dance? Isn't All Of This A Dance? Isn't That What We Do With Words? Isn't That What We Do When We Talk, When We Spar, When We Make Plans Or Leave It To Chance? Some Of It's Choreographed. Some Of The Steps Have Been Done For Ages. And The Rest -- The Rest Is Spontaneous. The Rest Has To Be Decided On The Floor, In The Moment, Before The Music Ends.

After Working For So Long On Being Sure Of Each Other, Sure Of This Thing, Suddenly We Were Unsure Again.

We All Contain Mysteries, Especially When Seen From The Inside.

You Can Give Words, But You Can't Take Them. And When Words Are Given, That Is When They Are Shared. We Remember What That Was Like. Words So Real They Were Almost Tangible. There Are Conversations You Remember, For Certain. But More Than That, There Is The Sensation Of Conversation. You Will Remember That, Even When The Precise Words Begin To Blur.

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

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

Every Relationship Has A Hard Part At The Beginning. This Is Our Hard Part. It's Not Like A Puzzle Piece Where There's An Instant Fit. With Relationships, You Have To Shape The Pieces On Each End Before They Go Perfectly Together.

I Am So Used To Hints And Mixed Messages, Saying Things That Might Mean What They Sort Of Sound Like They Mean. Games And Contests, Roles And Rituals, Talking In Twelve Languages At Once So The True Words Won't Be So Obvious. I Am Not Used To A Plainspoken, Honest Truth.

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.

People Take Love's Continuity For Granted, Just As They Take Their Body's Continuity For Granted. They Don't Realize That The Best Thing About Love Is Its Regular Presence. Once You Can Establish That, It's An Added Foundation To Your Life.

My Face Seems Too Square And My Eyes Too Big, Like I'm Perpetually Surprised, But There's Nothing Wrong With Me That I Can Fix.

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

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.

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.

If Other People See You Differently, You’ll End Up Seeing Them Differently, Too.

But You Have To Figure That If It’s Too Hard To Hang On, Then Maybe You Should Let Go.

New Yorkers Love The Bigness -- The Skyscrapers, The Freedom, The Lights. But They Also Love It When They Can Carve Out Some Smallness For Themselves. When The Guy At The Corner Store Knows Which Newspaper You Want. When The Barista Has Your Order Ready Before You Open Your Mouth. When You Start To Recognize The People In Your Orbit, And You Know That, Say, If You're Waiting For The Subway At Eight Fifteen On The Dot, Odds Are The Redhead With The Red Umbrella Is Going To Be There Too.

Such A Strange Thing, To Hold A Six-year-old's Hand. Especially A Six-year-old You've Only Just Met. A Toddler Will Grab Hold Of Your Finger, And Someone Your Own Age Will Clasp On To Your Whole Hand, But With Six-year-olds It's Something In Between, This Acknowledgment That They Can't Be The One To Take Hold, So You Have To Do All The Holding, Folding Your Hand Around Theirs, Feeling So Much Bigger And Responsible.

Little Less Than A Promise, And A Little More Than A Chance.

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.

Dispel, V. It Was The Way You Said, “i Have Something To Tell You.” I Could Feel The Magic Drain From The Room.

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.

People Say That Time Slips Through Our Fingers Like Sand. What They Don't Acknowledge Is That Some Of The Sand Sticks To The Skin. These Are Memories That Will Remain, Memories Of The Time When There Was Still Time Left.

I Was Starting To Think I Was Making Up Memories, Just To Have Answers. Our Brain Does That Sometimes. Or At Least Mine Does.

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.

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.

She Transforms Once Again Into Someone Carefree, And I Transform Into Someone Whose Only Care Is Her.

Bad Girl!" She Chided. "i'm Pretty Sure Boris Is A Boy," I Said. "oh, I Know," Mrs. Basil E. Assured Me. "i Just Like To Keep Him Confused," Then She And Boris Headed Off With My Future.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Pride Is Allowed To Have An Element Of Worry, Especially When You Are A Mother.

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.

I Don’t Like It When You Use My Shampoo, Because Then Your Hair Smells Like Me, Not You.

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