“You don't notice the dead leaving when they really hoose to leave you. You're not meant to. At most you feel them as a whisper or the wave of a whisper undulating down.”

“You're dead and you have to accept it.”

“Please don't let Daddy die Susie," he whispered. "I need him.”

“This wide wide Heaven is about flathead nails and the soft down of new leaves, wide roller coaster rides and escaped marbles that fall then hang then take you somewhere you could never have imagined in your small-heaven dreams.”

“Lindsey took my father's hand and watched his face for movement. My sister was growing up before my eyes. I listened as she whispered the words he had sung to the two of us before Buckley was born:Stones and bones;snow and frostseeds and beansand polliwogs.Paths and twigs, assorted kisses,We all who knowwho Daddy misses!His two little frogs of girls, that's who.They know where they are, do you, do you?When her eyes closed and they both slept silently together, I whispered to them:Stones and bones; snow and frost; seeds and beans and polliwogs. Paths and twigs, assorted kisses, We all know who Susie misses.....”

“What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meantgone.”

“When they reached the lobby and the doors opened I knew they were meant to be there, the four of them, alone.”