Previous
Ruth Connors
Susie’s junior-high sweetheart, Ray Singh’s English accent, Indian heritage, and serious smarts make him an outsider in the small city of Norristown, PA. He and Susie share just one kiss shortly before she is murdered—and after her death, Ray is singled out as a suspect in her murder because of a love poem he wrote her and tucked into one of her schoolbooks, found in the weeks after her disappearance. Ray never quite recovers from the isolating effects of having been a suspect, and strikes up a friendship with the loner Ruth Connors, who is just as obsessed with Susie and her death as Ray is. He and Ruth do the work of carrying on Susie’s legacy, organizing a candlelight vigil on the first anniversary of her death and speculating together endlessly on what their lives might have been like if Susie had lived. Ray goes to college at Penn and studies to be a doctor, but is constantly dogged by questions about the afterlife, the spirit world, and the idea of the human soul. On a trip home, Ray and Ruth reconnect on a visit to the sinkhole at the edge of town—there, after a fateful collision of events, Ruth and Susie switch places, and Ray makes love to Susie-as-Ruth. The experience transforms him entirely, and though he returns to his life and his studies, he becomes a confirmed believer in the soul, the afterlife, and the power of desire to “break through” the well between worlds.
Ray Singh Quotes in The Lovely Bones
The The Lovely Bones quotes below are all either spoken by Ray Singh or refer to Ray Singh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Snapshots
Quotes
Years passed. The trees in our yard grew taller. I watched my family and my friends and neighbors, the teachers whom I'd had or imagined having, the high school I had dreamed about. As I sat in the gazebo I would pretend instead that I was sitting on the topmost branch of the maple under which my brother had swallowed a stick and still played hide-and-seek with Nate, or I would perch on the railing of a stairwell in New York and wait for Ruth to pass near. I would study with Ray. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm afternoon of salty air with my mother. But I would end each day with my father in his den. I would lay these photographs down in my mind, those gathered from my constant watching, and I could trace how one thing—my death—connected these images to a single source. No one could have predicted how my loss would change small moments on Earth. But I held on to those moments, hoarded them. None of them were lost as long as I was there watching.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Lovely Bones LitChart as a printable PDF.
Ray Singh Quotes in The Lovely Bones
The The Lovely Bones quotes below are all either spoken by Ray Singh or refer to Ray Singh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Snapshots
Quotes
Years passed. The trees in our yard grew taller. I watched my family and my friends and neighbors, the teachers whom I'd had or imagined having, the high school I had dreamed about. As I sat in the gazebo I would pretend instead that I was sitting on the topmost branch of the maple under which my brother had swallowed a stick and still played hide-and-seek with Nate, or I would perch on the railing of a stairwell in New York and wait for Ruth to pass near. I would study with Ray. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm afternoon of salty air with my mother. But I would end each day with my father in his den. I would lay these photographs down in my mind, those gathered from my constant watching, and I could trace how one thing—my death—connected these images to a single source. No one could have predicted how my loss would change small moments on Earth. But I held on to those moments, hoarded them. None of them were lost as long as I was there watching.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
