Top 60 Laura Nowlin Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

2. “I can’t do this anymore.”

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

4. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

6. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

8. “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

9. “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

10. “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

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. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

15. “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

16. “I’m in love with Finny.”

— Laura Nowlin

17. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

19. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

22. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

24. “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

25. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

27. “Sometimes I am disappointed with love.”

— Laura Nowlin

28. “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

29. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

35. “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

36. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

39. “Kids who rent limos are pretentious and are taking prom way too seriously.”

— Laura Nowlin

40. “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

41. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

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

— Laura Nowlin

44. “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

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

— Laura Nowlin

46. “They would rather ruin their perfect love trying to make it work because being unhappy together is better than being unhappy apart.”

— Laura Nowlin

47. “Books are unlimited.”

— Laura Nowlin

48. “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

49. “It hurts for him to smile at me like that.”

— Laura Nowlin

50. “Oh,” I say, “Sylvie is a cheerleader. She’s on student council and the honor roll. She’s too busy being perfect to be shooting up heroin on the side.”

— Laura Nowlin