Indrani > Indrani's Quotes

“He's just a friend, we'd argue. But if he was just a friend, why was he hidden, why were we so upset to have him discovered?”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Then he picks up the first book and holds it so Peter can read the title.   
I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This

Peter quiets. Watches as Neil holds up the books one by one.

Just Listen
Stay
You’re the One That I Want
So Much Closer
Where I Want to Be
The Difference Between You and Me
Positively
Matched
Perfect
Wonder
You Are Here
Where I Belong
I’ll Be There
Along for the Ride
The Future of Us
Real Live Boyfriends
Keep Holding On

When Neil is through, Peter smiles and holds up his hand, gesturing Neil to wait there, to not say a word. He picks out two books from the YA section, then runs to the fiction section for a third. He is still smiling when he returns to Neil and shows his selections one by one.

Take a Bow
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You
Keep Holding On”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“They still have plenty to say to each other, just not anything right now.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Anticipation is no longer needed- because the moment is now.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“They beat the shit out of me. But you know what? I didn't need that shit inside of me. I'm glad it's gone.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“The DJ opens his eyes and sees what he's done. By all rights, he should switch the song. But it's a long-distance dedication to the boy he loves down in Texas. He dials up the boy right now and holds his phone into the air.

Not all songs need to be for dancing. There will always be the next song, to draw the dancers back.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“There is the sudden. There is the eventual.
And in between, there is the living.

We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. WE make more than dust.

That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“And Avery looks up at just that moment and sees the blue-haired boy glancing his way.

Some of us applaud. Others look away, because it hurts too much.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“They had built a friendship strong enough to withstand the disappearance of kisses. It was off balance, at first, for sure- their bodies not knowing what to do, the magnetism toward kissing still there, because even when the mind shuts off the romance, it sometimes takes a while for the body to get the message.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“New can be an emotion.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“We always underestimated our own participation in magic. That is, we thought of magic as something that existed with or without us. But that’s not true. Things are not magical because they’ve been conjured for us by some outside force. They are magical because we create them, and then deem them so. Ryan and Avery will say the first moment they spoke, the first moment they danced, was magical. But they were the ones—no one else, nothing else—who gave it the magic. We know. We were there. Ryan opened himself to it. Avery opened himself to it. And the act of opening was all they needed. That is the magic.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“You can’t know what it is like for us now—you will always be one step behind.
Be thankful for that.
You can’t know what it was like for us then—you will always be one step ahead.
Be thankful for that, too.
Trust us: There is a nearly perfect balance between the past and the future. As we become the distant past, you become a future few of us would have imagined.
It’s hard to think of such things when you are busy dreaming or loving or screwing. The context falls away. We are a spirit-burden you carry, like that of your grandparents, or the friends from your childhood who at some point moved away. We try to make it as light a burden as possible. And at the same time, when we see you, we cannot help but think of ourselves. We were once the ones who were dreaming and loving and screwing. We were once the ones who were living, and then we were the ones who were dying. We sewed ourselves, a thread’s width, into your history.
We were once like you, only our world wasn’t like yours.
You have no idea how close to death you came. A generation or two earlier, you might be here with us.
We resent you. You astonish us.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“All along, you've used the first sentence as a lock. But now you find that it's the key.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“How could this happen? some of our parents asked us near the end. We knew what they were really asking, and some of us found the grace to say, It was nothing you did.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“We are such wonderful idiots, Peter thinks.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Because what is more transfixing than the sound of people hating you?”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Our lives were short, and we never would have wanted to have them be shorter. Sometimes perspective comes far too late. You cannot trust yourself. You think you can, but you can’t. Not because you are selfish. You cannot live for anyone else’s sake. As much as you may want to, you can’t stay alive just because other people want you alive. You cannot stay alive for your parents. You cannot stay alive for your friends. And you have no responsibility to stay alive for them. You have no responsibility to anyone but yourself to live.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“All the quips in the world couldn’t prevent Oscar Wilde from becoming a lovesick fool.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“But does he see everything, or only what he wants to be seeing? This is always one of the great questions of love.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Truces may stop the battles, but part of you will always feel like you're at war.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“We often believe the truest measure of a relationship is the ability to lay ourselves bare. But there's something to be said for parading your plumage as well, finding truth as much in the silly as the severe.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“We were once the ones who were living, and then we were the ones who were dying. We sewed ourselves, a thread's width, into your history.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“It's one of the secrets of strength: We're so much more likely to find it in the service of others than we are to find it in ourselves.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“As soon as Neil is out of the shower, he texts Peter.

You up? he asks.

And the reply comes instantly:
For anything.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“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.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Love, he thinks, is a lie that people tell each other in order to make the world bearable. He is not up for the lie anymore. And nobody is going to lie to him like that, anyway. He's not even worth a lie.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“He thinks it's because he was born in the wrong body, but we want to whisper in his ears that many of us were born in the right bodies and still felt foreign inside them, felt betrayed. We completely misunderstood our bodies. We punished them, berated them, held them to an Olympian ideal that was deeply unfair to them. We loathed the hair in some places and the lack of hair in others. We wanted to everything to be tighter, stronger, harder, faster. We rarely recognized our own beauty unless someone else was recognizing it for us. We starved or we pushed or we hid or we paraded, and there was always another body we thought was better than ours. There was always something wrong, most time numerous things wrong. When we were healthy, we were ignorant. We could never be content within our own skin.
Breathe, we want to tell Avery. Feel yourself breathe. Because that is as much a part of your body as anything else.
Avery, we whisper, you are a marvel.
And he is. He may never believe it, but he is.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Death is hard, and facing death is painful. But even more painful is the feeling that no one cares. To not have a friend in the world. Some of us died surrounded by loved ones. Some of us had loved ones who couldn't make it in time, who were too far away or just off getting some sleep. But there are also those us us who can tell you what it's like to have no one who you love, no one who loves you. It is very hard to stay alive just for your own sake.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“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?”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“He has no idea how beautiful the ordinary becomes once it disappears.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing