Top 60 Laura Nowlin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I can’t do this anymore.”

— Laura Nowlin

2. “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

3. “If he had been with me, everything would have been different.”

— Laura Nowlin

4. “Finny?” I say. There is silence. “Oh, Autumn,” my mother says.”

— Laura Nowlin

5. “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

6. “I think it’s because when we’re not looking at our watches, we’re looking at the light fading in the sky. The anticipation never escapes our perception.”

— Laura Nowlin

7. “My love for Finny is buried like 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

8. “Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life;.”

— Laura Nowlin

9. “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.”

— Laura Nowlin

10. “Like most of my stories, it will end tragically.”

— Laura Nowlin

11. “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

12. “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

13. “I wasn’t with Finny on that August night, but my imagination has burned the scene in my mind so that it feels like a memory.”

— Laura Nowlin

14. “I could close my eyes and believe that we have never been apart. I could invent a new past to remember.”

— Laura Nowlin

15. “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

16. “I can see some of the roses still blooming in my mother’s garden. Brown on the edges and bright in other colors, they open and unfold, their petals drooping downward, dying just as their lives have begun.”

— Laura Nowlin

17. “I know that you know I’ve been in love with you for forever. You don’t have to pretend.”

— Laura Nowlin

18. “On August 8, Phineas Smith died, and I can imagine every detail of that night.”

— Laura Nowlin

19. “During Job Week in fifth grade, I told the class and teacher that my career goal was to move to New York, wear black turtlenecks, and sit in coffee shops all day, thinking deep thoughts and making up stories in my head.”

— Laura Nowlin

20. “I’ve loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn’t change but grew.”

— Laura Nowlin

21. “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

22. “It’s never felt like 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

23. “All the time that became known in my mind as Before.”

— Laura Nowlin

24. “And I know that winter is supposed to end, but things aren’t always the way they are supposed to be.”

— Laura Nowlin

25. “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 like that.”

— Laura Nowlin

26. “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

27. “I’m in love with Finny.”

— Laura Nowlin

28. “The thought of enduring every day without him took away my sense of self, of balance, of hope.”

— Laura Nowlin

29. “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

30. “You think it is okay for you to be sad every day. But it is not okay. And you do not deserve it.”

— Laura Nowlin

31. “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

32. “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

33. “I don’t know if he’s realized that I can’t refuse him when he says my name like that.”

— Laura Nowlin

34. “Sometimes I am disappointed with love.”

— Laura Nowlin

35. “We are lying out on the grass looking up at the stars like characters in a children’s book.”

— Laura Nowlin

36. “They don’t see that her tension and perfection are the only things holding her together.”

— Laura Nowlin

37. “I love him the most when we fight and I am scared that he will leave me.”

— Laura Nowlin

38. “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

39. “My breath shudders and my eyelids close against the pain of loving him.”

— Laura Nowlin

40. “At moments like this, it amazes me that the words don’t come tumbling out of me.”

— Laura Nowlin

41. “Come on, Autumn,” he says. He makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “I know that you know I’ve been in love with you for forever. You don’t have to pretend.”

— Laura Nowlin

42. “Death happens to him more suddenly than I can describe to you or even care to imagine.”

— Laura Nowlin

43. “But you and I always remember things the same way.”

— Laura Nowlin

44. “And on the inside, we will be ripped and shredded, torn as the bonds that hold us are pulled away. We grew apart, we will say. It was an accident.”

— Laura Nowlin

45. “A few days ago on the phone, he said that he loved me; I said I wasn’t ready to say that back, and now, lying next to him and staring at the ceiling, I’m wondering if this is why he said it.”

— Laura Nowlin

46. “His mind is blank. He feels nothing, he thinks nothing; he exists, perfect and unscathed.”

— Laura Nowlin

47. “It was another momen when one of us could have said something, could have given us time, but neither of us did. We looked at each other until I couldn’t bear it anymore.”

— Laura Nowlin

48. “I like the idea of making out in his car; like a scene from a movie, the windows fog up in the cold and the radio plays our song.”

— Laura Nowlin

49. “I’m on your side,” he says. He wipes his hands on his napkin. “You don’t count,” I say. “Thanks.”

— Laura Nowlin

50. “We’re going to get ice cream,” Finny says. “I’m being kidnapped,” I say. “Good job, Phineas,” my mom says.”

— Laura Nowlin