Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.

— Alice Sebold

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

— Alice Sebold

No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved.

— Alice Sebold

Nothing is ever certain.

— Alice Sebold

Oh sweetheart, do you really think if you seal it up, that the pain's going to go away?

— Alice Sebold

Our loud I said I had two children. Silently I said three. I always felt like apologizing to her for that.

— Alice Sebold

Our only kiss was like an accident- a beautiful gasoline rainbow.

— Alice Sebold

Outside the hospital, a young girl who was selling small bouquets of daffodils, their green stems tied with lavender ribbons. I watched as my mother bought out the girl's whole stock. Nurse Eliot, who remembered my mother from eight years ago volunteered to help her when she saw her coming down the hall, her arms full of flowers. She rounded up extra water pitchers from a supply closet and together, she and my mother filled them with water and placed the flowers around my father's room while he slept. Nurse Eliot thought that if loss could be used as a measure of beauty in a woman, my mother had grown even more beautiful.(The Lovely Bones by Alice Se bold)

— Alice Sebold

Placing blame was easier than adding up the mounting figures of what he'd lost.

— Alice Sebold

Samuel walked out to Lindsey then, and there she was in his arms, my sweet butterball babe, born ten years after my fourteen years on Earth: Abigail Suzanne. Little Susie to me. Samuel placed Susie on a blanket near the flowers. And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be.

— Alice Sebold