David Levithan Quotes

Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woefully small targets.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

All art to me is an empathetic act. Whoever's telling a story is trying to transfer emotion into someone else.

Love without conversation is impossible.

Above all, I try to create an emotion to which others can respond.

It's weird to try to write lyrics for somebody else. They can't really get behind what you're saying or what you want them to say because they didn't experience it.

There are times when the power of language is not the power that is needed.

I definitely have moments in my life where I discovered a film, and the language of the film itself spoke to me in a way, as if someone came up to you and started speaking a language you'd never heard but understood and was able to express things the language you knew could not.

I don't always know what I want to hear, but I'm gonna try and pull it out and sing it to you, and if you hear it the way I sing it to you, then a wall is broken.

Love stories should be relatable.

You speak to be understood, right? And you're understood so you can be felt. And you're felt so you can get what you want.

Humans are fascinated with communication. I was always drawn to words and stories, staying in touch with your feelings and being open to what's around you.

I want to be a voice people listen to and feel good or sad or whatever.

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.

And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy. It climbs the same way on damp walls. You are to blame for this cruel sport. They are fleeing from my dark lair. You fill everything, you fill everything. Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy, and they are more used to my sadness than you are. Now I want them to say what I want to say to you to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The heart communes best when it does not try to speak.

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.

It's important to tell your story. It's important to listen.

There is no language that love does not speak.

Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room. I see a lot of gaping wounds and dazed expressions. Or, as Marianne Moore put it, "The world's an orphan's home." And this feels more true than almost anything else I know. But so many of us can be soothed by writing: think of how many times you have opened a book, read one line, and said, "Yes!" And I want to give people that feeling, too, of connection, communication.

The desire to reach hearts is wise

People will not lend you a hand until you first touch their hearts.

Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear Glean after what it can.

You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate.

He is not to them what he is to me," I thought: "he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine- I am sure he is- I feel akin to him- I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.