Leavitt Quotes & Sayings

We cling to hierarchies because our place in a hierarchy is, rightly or wrongly, a major indicator of our social worth. — Harold Leavitt

Susie: Doesn't it make you feel kind of awesome that the world is beautiful for no other apparent reason than that it is? Like beauty has its own secret reason. It doesn't need human eyes to notice. It just wants to be glorious and unbelievable. — Martine Leavitt

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year. — Caroline Leavitt

Real people have a way of banging against the doors you've closed; they know your name, your phone number. They live with you. — David Leavitt

You, my lord, are the ending of all true stories. — Martine Leavitt

I like the feeling that I'm vital, that I matter on my own and not because of what others think. — Lindsey Leavitt

I'm trying to abandon the present, but I don't even have the skills to master the past. — Lindsey Leavitt

Had I truly thought I would not die when he kissed me? But I did. For a moment the breath and life went out of me and there was no time and no tomorrow but only my lips against his. — Martine Leavitt

A true friend gives you exactly what you need, even if she has no idea why you need it. — Lindsey Leavitt

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised. — David Leavitt

The last thing I wanted when things were just barely started with Dax was having my friends make aware. What if they told my family? What was there even to tell so far? We'd kissed twice. We'd exchanged a few texts. I thought about him constantly. I'd named our first three children.
So what? — Lindsey Leavitt

I had a nervous breakdown at 17 when my first love left me, and he was a typical bad boy, albeit a charismatic one, with a string of broken hearts trailing behind him. — Caroline Leavitt

When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals. — Caroline Leavitt

Reality is just this game people play together, something their brain decides on, and the minute their brain gets iffy about reality, they realize everything they know about the world is just their own made-up version of it, and that would mean everyone is walking around in their own made-up world, all alone, and reality is just something we invent together to make us feel not so alone. It scares people when some of us check out of the game. — Martine Leavitt

Housewives of the 1950s were supposed to create show-stopping meals every night for their hard-working husbands. — Caroline Leavitt

I don't know if I've ever really touched him. Maybe once or twice when passing papers back. You know, even shorter, his hair looks so soft. Maybe it's time I rub it a little. So I can give more concrete details.
I stretch my hand across my desk, but stop when I realize the horror of what I was about to do. Pet Sean. Have I lost my mind? — Lindsey Leavitt

He [Wallace] sent a quick note to his friend [Franzen] explaining his behavior. "the bold fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,"[ ... ] "all I can tell you is that I may have been that [a worthy opponent] for you a couple/ three years ago, and maybe 16 months or tow or 5 or 10 years hence, but right now I am a pathetic and very confused man, a failed writer at 28, who is so jealous, so sickly searing envious of you and Vollmann and Mark Leyner and even David Fuckward Leavitt and any young man who is right now producing pages with which he can live and even approving them off some base-clause of conviction about the entrprise's meaning and end that I consider suicide a reasonable- if not at this point a desirable- option with respect to the whole wretched problem. — D.T. Max

Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody. — Caroline Leavitt

You could love many people in your life. Maybe love didn't die even when a person did, but that didn't mean there might not be room for someone else in your heart. — Caroline Leavitt

I am totally and completely addicted to movies. Jeff, my husband and I, watch movies every night and go out to the movies constantly. — Caroline Leavitt

Do what you love. Live fearlessly and take risks. Don't take no for an answer from anyone - go ahead and prove the naysayers wrong. Believe that anything can be possible. — Caroline Leavitt

I really want to go into the future 500 years and be a quantum physicist. Not only would I get to see all the incredible inventions I know will be out there, but I'd be able to understand the science behind them! — Caroline Leavitt

People love stories. They need stories. — Caroline Leavitt

I want to live in a world free of air talkers and technological affairs. Is that too much to ask? My — Lindsey Leavitt

Demonstrate talent, said Grandmother often to me, and you will still be loved by a husband when beauty has faded. — Martine Leavitt

That's not him at all, just how you perceive him. — Lindsey Leavitt

President Oliver, stop staring at my sister and get on the float before I assassinate your butt! Ginnie yells. — Lindsey Leavitt

I hate to say it, but Mom is right. You can't stay mad in Disneyland. — Lindsey Leavitt

A bead of cold sweat dangled on my fingertip before dripping onto the doorbell. What if I got electrocuted from my wet fingers? I would die literally inches from my first high school party. And everyone would be like, oh, poor thing was so nervous, what a tragedy. Death by sweat. — Lindsey Leavitt

I guess it's hard to be the villain without a hero. — Lindsey Leavitt

In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can. — David Leavitt

Everyone stared at her, sorry for her but glad it had not happened to them. There were a few murmurs of sympathy, and a few people whispering all the reasons they thought Vilsa may have deserved what had happened. It is important to make people deserve what happens to them. If bad things can happen for no apparent reason, then bad things might happen to innocent us. — Martine Leavitt

I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do. — Caroline Leavitt

Right. Like I have any plans of hanging out with Vampire Boy ever again. Schedule it in right after my lunch date with Lord Voldemort. — Lindsey Leavitt

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves. — Caroline Leavitt

I cried to my mother that I wanted to go to Hebrew school; I wanted Jewish friends. But when my mother took me, the kids there all knew each other, and somehow I was even more of an outcast. — Caroline Leavitt

And so he did his endless work,' I continued quietly, 'without feeling, without pity, without rest, for to open his heart to these would be to open his heart to his loneliness and longing and that was beyond bearing. — Martine Leavitt

There have been years where I've had to take a real job and I wrote during slow times and lunches. I think never forgetting how lucky I am to be able to do something I love has really fueled me. — Caroline Leavitt

I was a bookworm who aced every test - until third grade, when my teacher handed out a pop quiz about Jesus and the Apostles. — Caroline Leavitt

I watched that film the other night and it embarrassed me. So dated, so coy, so evasively homosexual only a fellow homosexual might recognize the subtext. — David Leavitt

I have long admired Caroline Leavitt's probing insight into people, her wit and compassion, her ability to find humor in dark situations, and conversely, her tenderness towards characters. — Dan Chaon

L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me. — Caroline Leavitt

Each man, when he dies, sees the landscape of his own soul. — Martine Leavitt

His [Death] voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty. — Martine Leavitt

Novels are forged in passion, demand fidelity and commitment, often drive you to boredom or rage, sleep with you at night. They are the long haul. They are marriage. Stories, on the other hand, you can lose yourself in for a few weeks and then wrap up, or grow tired of and abandon and (maybe) return to later. They can cuddle you sweetly, or make you get on your knees and beg. — David Leavitt

We all spend so much time worrying about the future that the present moment slips right out of our hands. And so all we have left is retrospection and anticipation, retrospection and anticipation. In which case what's left to recall but past anticipation? What's left to anticipate but future retrospection? — David Leavitt

Tell me what it is like to die," I answered.
He dismounted from his horse, looking at me strangely the whole while. "You experience something similar every day," he said softly. "It is as familiar to you as bread and butter."
"Yes," I said. "It is like every night when I fall asleep."
"No. It is like every morning when you wake up. — Martine Leavitt

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?' — Caroline Leavitt

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door. — Caroline Leavitt

I think the Internet has made things a lot easier. Twitter and Facebook let you really connect to your readers effortlessly! — Caroline Leavitt

Everything they've said is tainted now. Every day was a lie. — Lindsey Leavitt

Oh, I've had terrible, terrible relationships! The fact that I ever got happily married to a great, normal man is kind of a miracle. — Caroline Leavitt

Sex, my darling, is often the least important part of a passion. You'll learn that when you get older. - Maria Luisa (Tushi) Strauss — David Leavitt

Cautiously his foot explored, wiggled as it could, and finally felt warm flesh under the pants leg. — David Leavitt

They were good parents. The worst thing they ever did to us was die. — David Leavitt

He's going to want an explanation," I say.
"An explanation? You don't owe him anything. If you don't want to talk to him, don't. If you want to yell at him, do. If you want to slash his tires - "
"Ginnie."
"I was going to say don't. Or do. Whatever helps. — Lindsey Leavitt

We mean you don't love any men," Gretta said in her even, matter-of-fact voice.
"You know very well that I adore all men," I said. "I have always thought them to be the dearest of things. — Martine Leavitt

Susie: Maybe we're all making everything up as we go. — Martine Leavitt

By the time I was 5, I was already an outcast. It was the early 1960s, and I was part of the only Jewish family in a decidedly Christian suburb of Waltham, Mass. — Caroline Leavitt

Childhood smells of perfume and brownies. — David Leavitt

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself. — Caroline Leavitt

I think my stubbornness has served me well. I just knew at an early age what I wanted to do and I was determined to be able to make it happen, no matter how long it took. — Caroline Leavitt

When I'm done, I contemplate lying down in the middle of the road to let a car finish me off. I'm already half-dead. — Lindsey Leavitt

I have observed that you treat a man as an old garment to be taken apart and stitched again. Perhaps you could think of him as good cloth, rich fabric that wants only to be embroidered upon. And perhaps, if you will do that, you will see that you love Tailor yourself. — Martine Leavitt

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving. — Caroline Leavitt

While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you. — Caroline Leavitt

I write about the things that haunt or obsess me. — Caroline Leavitt

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters. — Caroline Leavitt

I tell myself that some names can be mistakes, like Mxyplyzyk, a store in New York that lost customers because few could spell its name to look up the address. I tell myself that lots of writers agonize over titles, and often get them wrong at first. — Caroline Leavitt

I thought Oliver was trying hard before, but now I realize it's quite the opposite
he doesn't try, he just is, makes up his mind and doesn't check if it's going to work for his image or come off wrong. Since the rest of us are being so self-aware, his presence seems calculated. No one can possibly be that breezy, saying what he thinks, feeling what he feels. I can see why people don't like him for this very reason
it's so much easier to call him a poser.
Because if he's the real deal, then that makes the rest of us fakes. — Lindsey Leavitt

Leavitt appeared, looming over him, a syringe in his hand. "I thought we'd come to an understanding, son. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to do this." He knelt down and stuck the needle in Thomas's neck, compressed the syringe with his thumb. Before he passed out, Thomas looked at Teresa again, their eyes meeting for just a few precious seconds. The world had already started to blur when they dragged her away, but he clearly heard what she called out to him. "Someday we'll be bigger." - — James Dashner

These are the best reasons to do anything in life. People who say things like this are the kind of people who change the world. Who prevent the world from ending. Or at least they can change the inner world of a reader and that is a sacred power. — Martine Leavitt

When it is winter and we must walk in the blizzard snow do not our fingers and toes whisper death And when winter is at last over ... can we not hear our bellies whisper death to us In the dark don't we know And when we are paralyzed by nightmares We know what you are. With our first cries we rail against you. We see you in every drop of blood in every tear. — Martine Leavitt

A straight line can readily be drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to maxima and minima, thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variables and their periods. — Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Living to an extraordinary age, she mourned them all equally as she buried her husband and, one by one, her children. In this suffering she found the best sort of perfection
the kind that never demands it of others. — Martine Leavitt

I just love that feeling of being in another world, of creating characters and watching where they go. — Caroline Leavitt

People laugh because they're nervous, or to cover up tension, or to flirt, or because there's some instant applause meter in their head telling them that it's the socially acceptable thing to do. Genuine laughter, I don't even think that happens daily. — Lindsey Leavitt

Remember that you don't have to forget what happened, but you can forget the pain. — Lindsey Leavitt

Kylee laughed. "Nothing with you is normal. But speaking of abnormal, I saw this movie where these two girls liked the same boy, and one girl was a werewolf, and the other was a dragon, although she didn't know it yet, and it turned out the boy was a killer of, like, magical creatures, so both girls died and he took the head cheerleader to prom."
"That sounds like a stupid movie," I said.
"It actually was. But the boy had this shirt off a lot. I guess hunting magical creatures is great for stomach muscles. — Lindsey Leavitt

When a flawlessly dressed woman steps out of an iridescent bubble and wants to know, like NOW if you'd like to become a substitute princess, do you:
a) run
b) faint
c) say yes! — Lindsey Leavitt

I had always known that I was Jewish - we celebrated the holidays, we went to a synagogue - but I had never known that I was supposed to feel ashamed about it. — Caroline Leavitt

'You might think of combinatorics as a machine too', the major says. 'A different sort of machine, though. Have you heard of Babbage's analytic engine? He never built it ... I have an analytic machine of my own-right here.' He taps his own skull. — David Leavitt

She learned that there is a cruelty in the world. She did not yet understand that those who hurt others do so because they believe that people desire to hurt them. She did not know yet that such people suffer more than the ones they hurt, for they must live in their own skin, in a world of their own making, a world full of enemies. — Martine Leavitt

I am an indifferent cook, but I can make pie. — Caroline Leavitt

Everyone had gone to school with someone's brother or known each other up at Cambridge. These were serious young leftist intellectuals, many of them communists devoted to the idea of a classless society, but they were also upper class and English and so almost unconsciously sought out others of their kind and mixed with them, while the working-class youth stood alone just outside the perimeter of this charmed circle, coming as close as he dared, barred from entry by an invisible boundary of accent. — David Leavitt

They just change. Their body changes. Their abilities - the things they do that make them who they are - leave, sometimes temporarily, sometimes forever. Every day they wake up with that big what if?
And nothing is scarier than a life filled with what ifs - living by day without predictability and control. Some people end up losing feeling. Some have uncontrollable spasms. Some can't function. Some end up blind or in a wheelchair. Some end up bedridden and paralyzed.
It's hard to know who "some people" will be. — Lindsey Leavitt

Which is worse, she thinks, waiting for the sting, or the sting itself? — Caroline Leavitt

I love real books, paper books, but I also love buying online, and I think that people are more willing to take a chance to read something if it's cheaper - sometimes books on the Kindle are $6. A hardback book is $25. For $25, it better be a really great book. Or you're going to be mad. — Caroline Leavitt

You are not supposed to get it. It's a paradox. All of mathematics is built on paradoxes. That's the biggest paradox of all-all this orderliness, and at the heart, impossibility. Contradiction. Heaven built on the foundations of hell. — David Leavitt

In the fall, she knew it was Death who sweetened the apples. — Martine Leavitt

I've always had a clear sense that time is short and we need to live as fully as we can in every moment. — Caroline Leavitt

Indie bookstores love writers as much as they love readers, and there is something about a community store, where you walk in, you feel known, and the delight in books is just infectious. — Caroline Leavitt

She knew she had never been truly alive until she met him, and never so happy and content with her lot until she was touched by the sorrow of him. — Martine Leavitt

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry. — Caroline Leavitt

I think it's very funny that someone would exaggerate to make himself look worse. — David Leavitt

I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: 'What's going on? Why aren't people responding?' — Caroline Leavitt

A title means marketing. It means that company's coming soon, and you'd better get out the Christmas lights so they don't miss your house. — Caroline Leavitt

It is life that hurts you not death. — Martine Leavitt

If untimely death came only those who deserved that fate, Keturah, where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man's great gift, but one thing is not his to choose
the time and means of death. — Martine Leavitt

Adolescence is the same tragedy being performed again and again. The only things that change are the stage props. — Lindsey Leavitt