I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found how to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it.

She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.

She was unaware that she was somewhat of a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did, how she observed moments of silence up and down the city and wrote small individual prayers in her journal, and the story had travelled so quickly that women lined up to know she had found where they’d been killed. She had fans in heaven..... Meanwhile, for us, she was doing important work, work that most people on Earth were too frightened even too contemplate.

My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.

The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them. They speak of a chill in the air. The mates of the deceased wake from dreams and see a figure standing at the end of thier bed, or in a doorway, or boarding, phantomlike, a city bus.

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

He had a moment of clarity about how life should be lived: not as a child or as a woman. They were the two worst things to be.