If He Had Been With Me Quotes

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

“I don’t feel numb anymore, and it’s not a good thing. My stomach hurts and my chest has a familiar ache.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“Well, that part is stupid,” Finny says.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“Acceptance is what he has given me, and I know I’m lucky to have that. And I think that’s enough.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“I sit on the Steps to Nowhere with my friends, and we laugh. It is spring and a breeze is ruffling our hair like loving fingers. We sit so close together that we constantly brush each other. We thouch each other with the casualness tht love allows. Noah and Alex thumb-wrestle. Angie pokes me and asks what I'm doing after school. Brooke reaches out to admire Sasha's new hair. We have sat like this for a hundred days and we think we will for another hundred and one.
That is friendship, and it is love, but I already know what they have not learned yet; how dangerous friendship is, how damaging love can be.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“they never stop; they never wonder if they already have it all”
― 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

“Finny grins at me, and I finally realize that I never, never felt this way about Jamie,”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“Jamie teases me about my new best friend the English teacher and mocks the length of the book.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“For as long as I can remember, people have told me that I am pretty. This came from adults more often than other children. They said it to me when they met me; they whispered it to each other when they thought I could not hear. It became a fact I knew about myself, like my middle name was Rose or that I was left-handed: I was pretty. Not that it did me any good. The adults all seemed to think it did, or at least should, but in childhood my prettiness gave more pleasure to the adults than it did me. For other children, the defining characteristic was another fact I had accepted about myself—I was weird. I never tried to be weird, and I hated being seen that way. It was as if I had been born without the ability to understand if the things I was about to say or do were strange, so I was trapped into constantly being myself.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“The love I’ve tried to hold back breaks its dam and flows over me,”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“It became a fact I knew about myself, like my middle name was Rose or that I was left-handed: I was pretty.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“It’s possible to love two people at
once, but could it be possible to stay loyal to one?”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“I imagine leaving my blinds open for him when I change clothes. I imagine his hand moving up my thigh as we watch a movie with a blanket thrown over our laps. I imagine that even though we were friends as children, we wouldn’t have stayed children just because we were together.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“They’ve loved each other nearly their whole lives, yet are not in love.”
― 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 if an anatomy book.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“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, If He Had Been with Me

“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, If He Had Been with Me

“I want him to be in love with me.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“I don't want to watch him fall for another girl.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Kids who rent limos are pretentious and are taking prom way too seriously.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“How could two people dying for love be stupid?”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Oh, Autumn,” my mother says.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“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, If He Had Been with Me

“I’m fine,’ I say. I always am. Comparatively.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

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

“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, 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 there is nothing left to see, and 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

“You can feel more than one way about a person”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me