Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Or is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else?
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the vulnerability and emotional risks involved in seeking connection with others.
In this quote, David Levithan explores the emotional complexities of human relationships, questioning why we open ourselves up to potential hurt in our quest for connection. He suggests that loneliness and fear may drive our desire for belonging, yet also acknowledges the profound joy we can feel from sharing meaningful moments with others, despite the risks involved.
In practice
In a discussion on the importance of building relationships, this quote highlights the paradox of vulnerability.
this is why we call people exes, I guess - because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. it's too easy to see an X as a cross-out. it's not, because there's no way to cross out something like that. the X is a diagram of two paths.
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.
The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it's the temperature of happiness.
I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body's thoughts, no goals but the body's goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.
It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date. It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be.
Even though I'm seventeen, I guess I still thought this would always be true - that there would always be that lost-and-found, and not the lost-and-still-lost that I am now trapped inside.
I've found that in places where women have not really been afforded full rights yet - for instance, in the Middle East - even very conservative politicians in the region will say, 'You know, my daughter would really like to meet you,' or, 'Would you send a note to my granddaughter?'
If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much / to you.
The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
You know we fixate on the food so much itself: “Oh, the ultimate brownie or the ultimate this or that” -- well, let me tell you something: It’s all poop in about 12 hours, okay? The real power that food has is its ability to connect human beings to each other -- that’s the stuff right there and, to me, everything else is secondary to that.
Throughout our history each and every generation has expanded upon the freedoms won by their parents and grandparents. Each and every generation has removed some of the barriers to full participation in the American dream. And the next great barrier standing before our generation is the prohibition on marriage for same-sex couples
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