Quotes from Markus Zusak

It's hard to not like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them

She even touches Jimmy's face on the photos, and I see what it is to love someone like Milla loved that man. Her fingertips are made of love.

You can kill a man with those words. No gun. No bullets. Just words and a girl.

Maybe one morning I'll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.

If someone wanted to be a runner, you don't tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.

Why me?' I ask God. God says nothing. I laugh and the stars watch. It's good to be alive.

It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them

An attribute of Rosa Hubermann, she was a good woman for a crisis.

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

And they would all smile at the beauty of destruction.

Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

If your eyes could speak, what would they say?

If you're optimistic, think of it as bronze.

Living in Sydney, I've taken the chance to start surfing again. One of my best memories of growing up is catching my first proper wave and surfing across it and my brother cheering at me from the shore.

I think 'The Lord Of The Rings' is the mother of all cult books, because you can be in that cult and not even know you're in it.

Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a licence?

I procrastinate in spades. In my defence, I also try to have all other distractions solved before I can concentrate on writing. My small theory is that to write for three hours, you need to feel like you have three days. To write for three days, you need to feel like you've got three weeks, and so on.

I think to be a writer, you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.

I've heard some writers say things like, 'Well, I'm a professional writer. I only start books I know I can finish.' I look at it maybe the other way: I only want to write books I'm not sure I can write.

Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.

The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a house painter like my father, but I was always screwing up when I went to work with him. I had a talent for knocking over paint and painting myself into corners. I also realized fairly quickly that painting bored me.

Sometimes you get the cynical person saying, 'Do we really need another book set in Nazi Germany?' But I think you just have to ask, 'Is this a story worth telling?'