David Levithan, Every Day

"The sound of words as they're said is always different from the sound they make when they're heard, because the speakers hears some of the sound from the inside."

"The sound of the words as they're said is always different from the sound they make when they're heard, because the speaker hears some of the sound from the inside"

"The past and future are what's complicated. It's the present that's simple."

"I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned 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."

"Breath and heat and contact and shirts off and skin on skin and smiles and murmurs and the enormity revealing itself in the tiniest of gestures, the most delicate sensations."

"What’s the point of something virtual if it doesn’t end up being real?"

"It’s okay,” I tell her.“It is okay to be happy"

"I wish she could see how it hits him. The look on his face, his life caving in. Because then maybe she’d realize, if only for a split second, that even though the world doesn’t matter to her, she matters to the world."

"We come to a corner where there are a few people protesting the festivities. I don't understand this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired. In my experience, desire is desire, love is love."

"Now that the day is almost done, the world of glass recedes, the butterfly threat diminishes. I imagine that we're both here in this bed, that my invisible body is nestled against hers. We are breathing at the same pace, our chests rising and falling in unison. We have no need to whisper, because at this distance, all we need is thought. Our eyes close at the same time. We feel the same sheets against us, the same night. Our breath slows together. We split into different versions of the same dreams. Sleep takes us at the exact same time."

"I don't have the heart to tell him that's the wrong way to think about the world. There will always be more questions Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go."

"I can see that the sadness has returned. And it's not a beautiful sadness- beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain."

"It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are."

"What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they've lived past lives, because there is no way the years I've spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I'm feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In you 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 now just arriving at the place you were always meant to be."

"It's one thing to fall in love. It's another to feel someone else fall in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love."

"I want love to conquer all. But love can't conquer anything. It can't do anything on it's own. It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf."

"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."