"Just because something seems impossible doesn´t mean that you shouldn´t try."
~ Laura Nowlin
Read all great Laura Nowlin quotes below ...
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In the realm of contemporary fiction, Laura Nowlin emerges as a guiding light, her novels resonating deeply with readers through their raw emotion and profound insights into the human condition. With her astute grasp of life's complexities and her talent for crafting captivating narratives, Nowlin has etched her name as a formidable force in literature.
From the heart of Missouri, Laura Nowlin's passion for storytelling bloomed from a young age. Drawing inspiration from her personal experiences and keen observations of the world, she found solace and expression through the written word.
Debuting with the poignant "If He Had Been With Me," Nowlin unveiled a stirring exploration of love, loss, and self-discovery. The novel captivated readers, earning praise for its candid portrayal of adolescence and its timeless themes of friendship and forgiveness.
Continuing to enthrall audiences, Nowlin penned a series of equally compelling novels, including "This Song is (Not) for You" and "The Problem With Forever." Each installment showcases her knack for crafting authentic characters and heartfelt narratives that linger in the mind long after the final page.
While "If He Had Been With Me" remains a cornerstone of Nowlin's repertoire, she has garnered acclaim for her contributions to young adult literature. Her novels are hailed for their emotional depth, relatable characters, and nuanced exploration of complex themes.
In addition to her literary pursuits, Laura Nowlin is an educator committed to nurturing a love of reading and writing in future generations. Her dedication to teaching shines through in her writing, empowering readers to confront life's challenges with courage and resilience.
Nowlin's writing is distinguished by its emotional resonance, profound insights, and ability to capture the essence of human experience. Her prose is both lyrical and evocative, drawing readers into the inner lives of her characters and inviting empathy for their struggles and triumphs.
Readers are drawn to Laura Nowlin's work for its authenticity, emotional depth, and personal resonance. Her novels offer a cathartic escape from the chaos of everyday life, providing solace and reassurance to those navigating their own trials and uncertainties.
For those seeking a literary journey that is both heartrending and uplifting, Laura Nowlin's books are essential companions. With their poignant narratives, relatable characters, and timeless themes, they offer a window into the beauty and complexity of the human spirit.
Looking ahead, fans eagerly anticipate the release of Laura Nowlin's upcoming book in the coming months. While details remain scarce, anticipation is high for another captivating exploration of love, loss, and the quest for meaning from this gifted author. As readers eagerly await the next chapter in Nowlin's literary odyssey, one thing is certain – with her compassion and insight, the possibilities are boundless.
Laura Nowlin Best 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
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
“Just because something seems impossible doesn´t mean that
you shouldn´t try.”
― 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
“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
“And it's impossible to say and even harder to feel.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“ 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
“If he had been with me, everything would have been different.”
― 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
“They don’t see that her tension and perfection are the only
things holding her together.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“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 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
“Is all pink entirely banned?'
'Not if it's 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 don't know if he's realized that I can't refuse him when he
says my name that.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“On August 8, Phineas Smith died,”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“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
“There just isn't a way for two people on a bed to take off
their jeans without being awkward and embarrassing. But it
can still be perfect and wonderful too.”
― 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
“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
“The wind shakes the leaves and I have a sudden urge to go
outside. The gray world out there looks inviting, velvety and
cool.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“It hurts for him to smile at me that.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“I cannot imagine not wanting to live. I cannot imagine not
believing that it will be better someday. I cannot imagine
that there is nothing left to see, that there is nothing to
tie me to Earth. As long as I want to live, then I must be
fine.”
― 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
“She's made of the stories she has read.”
― 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
“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
“I want to pull Finny out of my mind a splinter so that I can
adore Jamie the way he deserves to be adored. And even more
than that, because I am a selfish, bad creature, I want to feel
that adoration. I want to be free of this guilt.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“And I know that winter is supposed to end, but things aren't
always the way they are supposed to be.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“I wasn’t with Finny on that August night, but my imagination
has burned the scene in my mind so that it feels a memory.”
― 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
“Finny?
Oh, Autumn.”
― 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
“There will always be something I cannot protect him from.”
― 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
“I never know what to do to make you happy, do I?"
"You make me happier than any other person ever has," I say but
he still won't look at me.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Are you sure you still would want to if you were sober?" I say.
Finny nods. "Yeah," he says again. "But I'm only telling you
because I'm not.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“But you think we're here for beautiful things and you think
sadness is beautiful?"
"It can be," I say.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“We’re just being close one last time.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“God, Autumn, you’re the ideal I’ve judged every other girl by
my whole life,”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Try to marry your first love. For the rest of your life, no one
will ever treat you as well.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Sometimes I am disappointed with love.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“If he had been with me, Finny would still be alive. If he had
been with me, everything would have been different. But whose
fault is it that he wasn't?”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“I the idea of making out in his car; a scene from a movie,
the windows fog up in the cold and the radio plays our song.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“My love for her is vehement, protracted, and interminable.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“I wake many times. We shift and change positions together; he
nuzzles me, I move up against him. He holds my hands, my neck,
my face. I dream, I wake, I see him, I sleep”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“We're going to get ice cream," Finny says.
"I'm being kidnapped," I say.
"Good job, Phineas," my mom says.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Death happens to him more suddenly than I can describe to you
or even care to imagine.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“and I know, I know, I know, I know. If he had been with me,
everything would have been different.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“We are lying out on the grass looking up at the stars
characters in a children’s book.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“And I love him. For all of my memory, I have loved him; I do
not even notice it anymore. I feel what I have always felt
when I look at him, and I have never before asked myself what
it is exactly. 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. I do not love him
the way I love Jamie. It’s not the way I love Sasha or my
mother or Mr. Laughegan. It’s the way I love Finny. And it’s
impossible to say and even harder to feel. Nineteen When the
weather turns cold, the War breaks out.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“, fairy-tale love? Cartoon character with hearts floating all
around him? Or a movie montage with the best song? That's what
you were to him. You were the biggest, most impossible dream
for him.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“My love for Finny is buried a stillborn child; it is just as
cherished and just as real, but nothing will ever come of it.
I imagine it wrapped up in lace, tucked away in a quiet corner
of my heart. It will stay there for the rest of my life, and
when I die, it will die with me.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“And the need to write it down overwhelms me and I step out of
the shower, dripping and shivering.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“I'll love her even if she turns out to be cruel. That's my
curse.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“My breath shudders and my eyelids close against the pain of
loving him.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“I’m in love with Finny.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“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 love him the most when we fight and I am scared that he will
leave me.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Sorry," I say. "You just look awful." He looks beautiful.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“We are all dead bodies that haven’t died yet.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“But life is that sometimes, and that’s a good thing.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“After this,” he says, “things are going to be the way they were
always supposed to be.” Then he climbs inside and closes the
door.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“The thought of enduring every day without him took away my sense
of self, of balance, of hope.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“At moments this, it amazes me that the words don't come
tumbling out of me.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“They would rather ruin their perfect love trying to make it work
because being unhappy together is better than being unhappy apart.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Books are Autumn’s real life. She is made of the stories she
has read.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“When you’re reading a book and you can’t
focus, ask yourself, ‘How much is the writer’s fault, and how
much is mine?’ Be honest. That’s how you’ll know if you
should set it aside forever or for a few hours.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“My mother named me Autumn. People say to me “Oh how pretty,”
and then the name seems to glide away from them, not grasping
all the things that the word should mean to them, shades of
red, change, and death”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“I’m on your side,” he says. He wipes his hands on his napkin.
“You don’t count,” I say. “Thanks.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“On August 8, Phineas Smith died, and I can imagine every
detail of that night.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“but sometimes I wonder if she would have cared as much if I
had been ugly as well as odd.”
― 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 think we're supposed to experience as much beauty as we
can.
Isn't that the same as happiness, too?
No, because sometimes sad things are beautiful.”
― Laura Nowlin, If he had been with me
“But you and I always remember things the same way.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Please, Finny,” I say. I lean up and kiss his neck, right
under his ear. He gasps sharply and his body shudders.
“Please, Finny,” I whisper between kisses.
“Please. Please. Please.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“There is real life and then there are books. I try to puzzle
out what is real and what isn’t, what I can have and what I
never will.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“I’m not saying it’s okay. It happens mostly when she’s
depressed, and if her mom is any indication, depression is
going to be a lifelong thing for her. I’m simply saying that
Autumn’s base motivations are defensive, not cruel.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“And then she kisses him. And I start reading.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“But that's not real life."
"So?”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Are you sad?" he says.
"Well, yeah."
"What is making you sad?"
"I don't know," I say.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“It's never felt this before. It feels so natural. It feels
so right. Finny. I finally understand what's been missing for
me all these years.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Books are unlimited.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“Sometimes I am disappointed with love. I thought that when
you were in love, it would always be right there, staring you
in the face, reminding you every moment that you love this
person. It seems that it isn’t always that.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me
“I’ve seen her finish a novel, pause staring off into space
for a minute she’s receiving instructions, and then open
another book. It’s as if her job is to read and she’s behind
on her quota.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“I understand this much: Autumn lives in this world and the
fictions of her mind or those written by others her.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“There’re always things that we could have done differently.
What matters is what we do now.”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her
“With a plan in place, I climb out of the car and run across
the rain-soaked pavement to her. I fall to my knees in front
of Sylvie, putting my hand to the ground. It’s wet—”
― Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her