David Levithan Quotes

It doesn't bother me whether I am or I'm not compared to my dad. I do not feel any pressure at all from being his son.

Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear.

Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.

Being the way I used to be didn't really fit the family profile. I was always loved but if, say, Dad had an interesting business idea I'd be the last person he'd want to share it with in case I blew the lid on it.

Being compared to my father was never a problem for me.

He doesn't know how to be warmer. I can't blame him. My dad had to deal with more stuff than I ever did.

I think any young person who is going into the same field as their parent whose parent has been very successful, it's complicated.And it was complicated for me.

Are anybody's parents typical?

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes.

You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece.

Parents try the best they can. They want the best for you. But a lot of their stuff is just their own. If you can pull yourself away from it and not always feel like they're attacking you, then it's easier to deal with.

Your folks are god, you love them and you want to make them happy but you still want to make up your own rules.

You're always trying to impress your parents regardless of how old you are. And when they're gone, there's nobody to impress. But I think my parents would be proud of me. My father has been gone for 30 years, and by the time he passed away, I was a lawyer. I hope he would be impressed.

What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents have not lived

It's very important for me to be distinguished in my own home.

Parents. Honestly. Sometimes they really do think the world revolves around them.

We are all, I suppose, beholden to our parents - the question is, how much?

Dad, I may not be the best, but I come to believe that I got it in me to be somebody in this world. And it's not because I'm so different from you either. It's because I'm the same. I mean, I can be just as hard-headed, and just as tough. I only hope I can be as good a man as you.

A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.

Parents can be very influential in designing those little creepy-crawlers that jump around in your mind for the rest of your life. It's the fear of not being good enough.

I worked for dad on the grounds and I was in high school and I said I wanted to go to college, and he said, well, you figure it out. He said I will pay for your college but you're going to go to St. Vincent. St. Vincent College right here. That's about as much as I can afford, you work here, right here at home. I said, what if I can get somewhere else? And he said if I can get there, that's your call.

And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.

...since I was a little boy, she had always wanted me to go. She was always sending me off on a bus someplace, to elementary school, to camp, to relatives in Kentucky, to college. She pushed me away from her just as she'd pushed my elder siblings away when we lived in New York, literally shoving them out the front door when they left for college.

sometimes the very faults of parents produce a tendency to opposite virtues in their children.