The Lovely Bones Quotes

The 7 most famous lines from Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (2002), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.

• “Don't worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world.”

  - Jack Salmon. p. 3 - the snow globe on her father's desk; the novel's first image of its own heaven, spoken before Susie dies.

• “My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer.”

  - Susie Salmon. p. 6 - the flat, devastating introduction of Mr. Harvey; menace delivered in gardening small talk.

• “People grow up by living... I want to live.”

  - Susie Salmon. p. 19 - Susie bargaining with Franny in heaven; the wish the whole novel will honor sideways.

• “If you stop asking why you were killed instead of someone else... you can be free. Simply put, you have to give up on Earth.”

  - Franny. p. 120 - heaven's counselor explaining the price of peace; Susie's answer is the plot of the second half.

• “In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows.”

  - Susie Salmon. p. 125 - watching Lindsey's first love under the rowboat; the most argued sentence Sebold ever wrote.

• “These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone.”

  - Susie Salmon. pp. 319-320 - the title drop, arriving on the second-to-last page; the book's argument completed.

• “I wish you all a long and happy life.”

  - Susie Salmon. p. 328 - the final line, after her charm bracelet surfaces at the sinkhole; a goodbye that closes the book but not the grief.

Why these lines survive

Alice Sebold’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 7 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.

Quote collectors: pair this page with the The Lovely Bones quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 6 hours and 27 minutes at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like The Lovely Bones list is next.

How to use a quotes page

Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of Alice Sebold are an invitation, not a summary.

More quote collections

The Da Vinci Code quotes, Gone Girl quotes, The Shining quotes, Verity quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.

Frequently asked questions