Laura Nowlin > Quotes

“I've loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn't change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“This book is a treasure; I did not suspect it would be so good when I picked it up, but now I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever.

I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“I love him in a way I cannot define, as if my love were an organ within my body that I could not live without yet could not pick out of an anatomy book.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Stay I whisper to him. Stay in the car. Stay in this moment. But of course he never does.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Just because something seems impossible doesn´t mean that you shouldn´t try.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life;”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“If he had been with me, everything would have been different.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“And it's impossible to say and even harder to feel.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Like most of my stories, it will end tragically.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“I can see some of the roses still blooming in my mother´s garden. Brown on the edges and bright in other colors, their petals drooping downward, dying just as their lives have begun.
They stayed past their time, and I´ve realized that I have too.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“She's made of the stories she has read.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her

“They don’t see that her tension and perfection are the only things holding her together.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“My devotion to Autumn is engraved on my very being. I am in awe of her. I will sit in the stands and cheer her on in life as her most ardent admirer. I know I will always love her in the same way I know I'll always need oxygen.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her

“On August 8, Phineas Smith died,”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“I tell myself relationships are hard work. No one is perfect. There's no such thing as happily ever after.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“If only I’d told her that I loved her years ago, I wouldn’t be here now.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her

“This is the saddest part of any day, when too much time has passed to create happiness while it is still light out.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“Finny?
Oh, Autumn.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“it matters which people you spend time with, and it matters how you spend your time, because you don’t know how much you have.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her

“It's all done.
Finn's story is over.
His whole life.
That was it.

Not even nineteen years, and he'll never, ever do anything else ever again. Finn won't go off to college or celebrate his birthday. He won't get another haircut or get the oil changed in his car. He won't bite a hangnail on his thumb or buy another CD. Finn Smith has done everything he will ever get to do.

He won't get to be with Autumn.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her

“I know that you know I've been in love with you for forever. You don't have to pretend.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“I don't know if he's realized that I can't refuse him when he says my name like that.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Finny never tells anyone how he is feeling; you just have to know him well enough to understand when he is sad or scared. Today his expression does not tell me how he feels about me being over here. Either he couldn't care less, or he could be annoyed.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“I could close my eyes and believe that we have never been apart. I could invent a new past to remember.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“It was the sort of happiness that fools you into thinking that there is still so much more, maybe even enough to laugh forever.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Is all pink entirely banned?'
'Not if it's like a sassy pink,' I say. 'But if it's a sweet, girl pink, yes. Maybe some shade of sarcastic pink if it isn't too abrasive.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“I lay on my bed in late afternoon, watching a patch of light move across the floor, my throat tight, my body still. This is the saddest part of any day, when too much time has passed to create happiness while it is still light out. It’s too late. The daylight has been squandered on my immobility. The patch of light falls still; it begins to fade. It will be better when it is gone. This is only one day, I remind myself, and it is very nearly over.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“I know I will always love her in the same way I know I'll always need oxygen.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her

“I'm sorry for kissing you."
"Don't say that," I say. "Don't say you're sorry for that.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me