David Levithan Quotes

You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script.

What does it mean to be an individual? What does it mean to flourish?

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

I want people to be the authors of their own life story.

I'm very interested in how we take ownership of our own stories and our own lives.

As a southern woman, we often define ourselves by who we are with. But I wanted my life to be built differently.

Now that I'm older, I understand that it's up to the individual to decide who they are or what they are.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

You define your own life. Don't let other people write your script.

I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' " 'The way I want it?' " 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?' " 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.' " 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.' " 'Mess it up how?' " 'Forgot it.' " 'Forgot?' " 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

Everybody eventually discovers that they are an individual with the power to affect their own lives and make it better or not.

I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.

We are all the writer-director-star-producer of our own life. We see life through our own eyes.

My life choices are not supposed to be the gateway to somebody else's. That's my journey.

I got to the point where I was fed up with so many people telling me how and who I was supposed to be.

Don't let others define you. You define yourself.

One creates oneself.

I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. I'm going to figure out what that is.

I always had that yearning, that hunger, to one day be independent and be my own person and build my own world. The most fulfilling thing is to live a life where you have freedom.

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.

Man must assume responsibility for the direction of his life and destiny.

I never was a person who let people who have their ideas and their expectations of me dictate who I became.

You make yourself be whatever the hell you want to be, at the end of the day.

The gender is irrelevant; the identity is the one you should try and create for yourself by yourself, and the narrative of your own life becomes your own book.