“The album had to be perfect, because it was my ticket back to her, the key to my plan. I began to think that my whole life had been leading me to this piece of music. All my years of musical training, excessive partying and brotherly adventures had all been just a prelude to a boy convincing a girl that he loved her, and that would be enough.”

“It was then that I slipped in the darkness, unable to know if I could be seen.I made myself small in the darkness, unable to know if I could be seen. I had left for hours every day for eight and a half years as I had left my mother or Ruth and Ray, my brother and sister, and certainly Mr. Harvey, but he, I now saw had never left me. His devotion to me had made me know again and again that I had been beloved. In the warm light of my father’s love I had remained Susie Salmon-a girl with my whole life in front of me. “I thought if I was very quiet I would hear you,” he whispered.“If I was still enough you might come back.”

“At seventeen, I knew: my entire childhood had been just a prelude to this girl. I had never felt anything like it, and still haven't. I felt changed by her, physically.I became a different person, myself, the person I am now. And everything that came after-my family, my home, our entire life together-was a gift she gave me.”

“From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I'd been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone.”

“As I was escorted outside by the officers, my friends looked back at me with blank expressions. I don’t think they knew what to say to me. I had lied to them about my home life. They had always been there for me and probably would have understood if I had told them the truth from the start, but it was too late. All the lies I had told them about having a perfect family had been shattered by that one incident.”

“I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home”