If He Had Been With Me Quotes

“I add up again all of the things that I want from life. 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

“It’s midafternoon but I’m still in my pajamas. I’ve worn them for two days now. I’m wearing my glasses, and my hair is greasy. I know staying in bed for most of the day isn’t helping my argument that I just need to be left alone, but I can’t summon the resolve to do anything else. As long as I can sleep, I feel numb, and numb is good; numb doesn’t hurt.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“It will only be the first time once.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“Were you and Finny jumping in the leaves?” Mom asks when I slide into the back seat. I look over myself to see if I’m still covered in leaves.
“No,” I say. When I close the door, the lights shut off, and I see what she must have seen—back in the shadows, someone tall and lean is pulling himself up out of the leaves and dusting himself off.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“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

“By looking at the board, I seem him too. I see him only. 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.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“It was because loving you from a distance was one thing, but it wouldn’t have been fair to her if I were in love with my best friend.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“It’s too weird for them to be reminded that the boy who is supposed to be one of our enemies at school is family to me at home.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“I missed you,”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“every year there has been more and more other things that matter, and it has felt less and less like Christmas.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“What if I kissed you right now?”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“They’ve loved each other nearly their whole lives, yet are not in love. They are passionate and devoted. They are bound to and balanced by each other—the outer chaos of Angelina’s life and my mother’s inner darkness, Angelina’s strength and my mother’s will. I imagine Angelina’s fingers twine in her hair and rest there. “I love you,” she says. She always will.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“things, such normal things, and nothing else. 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, If He Had Been with Me

“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, If He Had Been with Me

“Angie holds up a mock Victorian dress with a high collar for me to see.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“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

“The feeling was so distinctive; it was different from any other kind of sadness I had known before or since.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“I will never read this book for the first time ever again.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“Jamie tells me that he will always love me and take care of me, no matter what. He says it over and over and over and over again.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me

“This 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

“If he had been with me, finny would still be alive.
If he had been with me, everything would've been different.
But who's fault is that he wasnt?”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“Accept when things are as good as theyre ever going to get.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“You think you deserve to be sad. 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, If He Had Been With Me

“Every moment we spent in silence was like another brick in the wall going up between us.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“two houses" I said. "And four people."
"It's our houses" he said. "And our family.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“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

“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. - Autumn (If He Had Been With Me)”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

“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 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. Sometimes I know that I love Jamie, but I don’t feel it, and I wonder what it would be like to be with someone”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been with Me