What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone.

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

It's very weird to succeed at thirty-nine years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted anyway.

Murder had a blood red door on the other side of which was everything unimaginable to everyone.

So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything.

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.