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Two Boys Kissing QUOTES

Two Boys Kissing QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " All through their relationship, Harry was the one in charge, Harry was the one who gave them direction. This wasn’t because Harry was smarter or even better at it than Craig was; it just meant more to him, to be in control. And Craig didn’t really care, so he ceded it away. He liked not being responsible all the time.
Complacency. Craig realizes now that this was complacency. One of the reasons he liked the sound of Harry’s voice was because it meant he didn’t have to use his own. But eventually this strategy backfired. Eventually Harry realized what was happening, and didn’t feel right about it. He wanted Craig to fight a little more, but by the time Craig started fighting for them to stay together, he had already lost. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

3 " Truces may stop the battles, but part of you will always feel like you're at war. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

4 " We watch them grow, with sadness and amazement and fear. We have stepped away, but not entirely away. They know this. They sense it. We are no longer here, but we are not yet gone. And we will be like that for the rest of their lives.

We watch, and they surprise us.

We watch, and they surpass us. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

5 " 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 , Two Boys Kissing

6 " It's hard to think of such things when you are busy dreaming or loving or screwing. The context falls away. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

7 " When you need to hold onto something, you should. Whatever gets you through, take it. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

8 " What a wonderful word, future. Of all the abstractions we can articulate to ourselves, of all the concepts we have that other animals do not, how extraordinary the ability to consider a time that's never been experienced. And how tragic not to consider it. It galls us, we with such a limited future, to see someone brush it aside as meaningless, when it has an endless capacity for meaning, and an endless number of meanings that can be found within it. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

9 " 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. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

10 " What a powerful word, future. Of all the abstractions we can articulate to ourselves, of all the concepts we have that other animals do not, how extraordinary the ability to consider a time that's never been experienced. And how tragic not to consider it. It galls us, we with such a limited future, to see someone brush it aside as meaningless, when it has an endless capacity for meaning, and an endless number of meanings that can be found within it. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

11 " 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

12 " 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

13 " 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

14 " But once upon a time - that would be our time - a telephone cord seemed like nothing less than a lifeline.
It was your attachment to the outside world and, even more than that, your attachment to the people you loved, or wanted to love, or tried to love.
Everything about it was fitting - the way it curled in on itself, the way it got so easily tangled, the way you could pull it only so far before it kept you in place.
Twisted and knotted and essential. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

15 " Max is a marvel to us. He will never have to come out because he will never have been kept in. Even though he has a mom and a dad, they made sure from the beginning to tell him that it didn't have to be a mom and a dad. It could be a mom and a mom, a dad and a dad, just a mom, or just a dad. When Max's early affections became clear, he didn't think twice about them. He doesn't see it as defining him. It is just a part of his definition. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

16 " What strange creatures we are, to find silence peaceful, when permanent silence is the thing we most dread "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

17 " Dreaming and loving and screwing. None of these are identities. Maybe when other people look at us, but not to ourselves. We are so much more complicated than that. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

18 " There are boys lying awake, hating themselves. There are boys screwing for the right reasons and boys screwing for the wrong ones. There are boys sleeping on benches and under bridges, and luckier unlucky boys sleeping in shelters, which feel like safety but not like home. There are boys so enraptured by love that they can't get their hearts to slow down enough to get some rest, and other boys so damaged by love that they can't stop picking at their pain. There are boys who clutch secrets at night in the same way they clutch denial in the day. There are boys who do not think of themselves at all when they dream. There are boys who will be woken in the night. There are boys who fall asleep with phones to their ears. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

19 " So what’s your story?” Ryan asks.
Avery looks up at him, hand still in the water. “My story?”
“Yeah. Everybody has at least one. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing

20 " He plants himself right there in front of Craig’s mother and says, “You need to love him. I don’t care who you thought he was, or who you want him to be, you need to love him exactly as he is because your son is a remarkable human being. You have to understand that.”

And Craig’s mother whispers back, “I know. I know. "

― David Levithan , Two Boys Kissing