Quotes from book

The Lovely Bones

“I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. He didn't want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn't want to look at me anymore, either.”

“There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven.”

“Between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. That doesn’t mean the weaker one doesn’t love the stronger.”

“Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.”

“She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.”

“I stared at her black hair. It was shiny like the promises in magazines.”

“Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.”

“And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be.”

“All you have to do is desire it, and if you desire it enough and understand why -- really know -- it will come.”

“Well, as my dad would say, it means she’s out of this shithole.”

“But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone.”

“I was in the air around him. I was in the cold mornings he had now. I was in the quiet time he spent alone. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. -Susie Salmon”

“How to Commit the Perfect Murder" was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.”

“Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.”

“My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.”

“When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said. "What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go?”

“Hey, Ocean Eyes,” my father said. “Where’d you go on us?”

“I fell in love with you again; While you were away - Jack Salmon”

“If I had but an hour of love, if that be all that is given me, an hour of love upon this earth, I would give my love to thee.”