“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. And I began to s...”

“Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.”

“Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living.”

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

“Nothing is ever certain.”

“He would find his Susie,inside his young son. Give that love to the living.”

“What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“Heaven would never be heaven without you.”

“Let your days become a fragrant song where heaven and earth continually collide”

“Heavens is here 'neath the mountain walls,In the song of the wind and the waterfalls,In the watchful stars that blanket the nightAnd the music of birds before the dawn light.Heaven is here in our m...”