“He had been my almost. My might-have-been.I was afraid of what I wanted most - His kiss. Still, I collected kiss stories. -Susie Salmon”

“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”

“I had been kissed once by someone I liked. His name was Ray and he was Indian. He had an accent and was dark. I wasn't supposed to like him. Clarissa called his large eyes, with their half closed lids, "freak-a-delic," but he was nice and smart and helped me cheat on my algebra exam while pretending he hadn't. He kissed me by my locker the day before we turned in our photos for the yearbook. When the yearbook came out at the end of the summer, I saw that under his picture he had answered the standard "My heart belongs to" with "Susie Salmon." I guess he had had plans. I remember his lips were chapped.”

“I simply wanted a kiss. I was a freshman girl who had never been kissed. Never. But I liked the boy, he liked me, and I was going to kiss him. That's the story, the whole story, right there.”

“It was friendly. Mostly." I guzzled the coffee like it was a drug. "Tounge?" "Have you ever had a friendly tounge kiss?" "Yes, as a matter of fact, but that's my story. I want to hear yours.”

“Tuck," I breathe, and then he kisses me.I've been kissed before. But nothing like this. He kisses me with surprising tenderness, for all of his gusty talk. Still cupping my face, he gently brushes his lips against mine, slowly, like he's memorizing what I feel like. My eyes close. My head swims with his smell, grass and sunshine and musky cologne. He kisses me again, a litte more firmly, and then he pulls back to look down into my face.”