The Lovely Bones * Quotes

"I was 14 years old, when I was murdered, on December 6, 1973. I was here for a moment. And then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life."

"Holly said there was a wide, wide heaven beyond everything we knew. Where there was no cornfield, no memory, no grave... but I wasn't looking beyond yet, I was still looking back."

"Nobody notices when we leave. I mean, the moment when we really choose to go. At best you might feel a whisper, or the wave of a whisper, undulating down. My name is Salmon, like the fish."

"There was one thing my murderer didn't understand... he didn't understand how much a father could love his child."

"My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. I took his photo once as he talked to my parents about his border flowers. I was aiming for the bushes when he got on the way. He stepped out of nowhere and ruined the shot. He ruined a lot of things."

"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence. The connections, sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent, that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it."

Buckley: "Grandma? I know where Susie is."
Grandma Lynn: "Yeah, Susie's gone to heaven, sweetheart."
Buckley: "Lindsey said there is no heaven."
Grandma Lynn: "All right then, she's dead."
Buckley: "You might be dead soon."
Grandma Lynn: "Why do you say that?"
Buckley: "Because you're old."
Grandma Lynn: "35 is not old."