David Levithan: I think that if you were somehow able to measure the w...

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.

David Levithan

moments remember love

If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.

David Levithan

ive-learned wish want

Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.

David Levithan

flirting feelings love-is

You have to believe there are kisses and laughs and risks worth taking.

David Levithan

kissing laughing believe

The words that matter always stay.

David Levithan

unspoken-words important meaningful

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

ocean doe wind

We are not taught "love thy neighbor unless their skin is a different color from yours " or "love thy neighbor unless they don't make money as you do" or "love thy neighbor unless they don't share your belies." We are taught "love thy neighbor". No exceptions. We are all in this together - every single one of us. And the only way we are going to survive as a society is through compassion. A Great Community does not mean we all think the same things or do the same things. It simply means we are willing to work together and are willing to love despite our differences.

David Levithan

compassion mean thinking

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.

David Levithan

airplane girl thinking

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.

David Levithan

falling-in-love silly heart

...because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life.

David Levithan

make-yourself-happy alright rain

I will never have a photograph of her to carry around in my pocket. I will never have a letter in her handwriting, or a scrap-book of everything we've done. I will never share an apartment with her in the city. I will never know if we are listening to the same song at the same time. We will not grow old together. I will not be the person she calls when she's in trouble. She will not be the person I call when I have stories to tell. I will never be able to keep anything she's given to me.

David Levithan

cities song book

I no longer think she's just being nice. She's being kind. Which is much more a sign of character than mere niceness. Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.

David Levithan

nice kindness character

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

should-have gone life

There are all these moments you don't think you will survive. And then you survive.

David Levithan

moments thinking

This is the thing they don't tell you about being a third wheel - it's not like you're the wheel that's added on. You were one of the original two wheels, but suddenly you're not so important anymore. The relationship drives fine without you.

David Levithan

wheels important two

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

writing trying love-is

We love and we feel and we try and we hope.

David Levithan

feels trying

The older you get, the wiser you are - this is true. But you also question what use this wisdom is.y

David Levithan

wiser wiser-you use

If I'm not telling you something, it's for a reason. Just because you trust me, it doesn't mean I have to automatically trust you. Trust doesn't work like that.

David Levithan

trust-me reason mean

Happiness is so rarely a part of my vocabulary, because for me it's so fleeting

David Levithan

fleeting vocabulary

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.