Quotes from Markus Zusak

They're the ones I can't stand to look at, although on occasion I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.

The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs.

When we move apart, she looks at me again, till a small tear lifts itself up in her eye. It trips out to find a wrinkle and follows it down.

You hungry?' Rudy asked. Liesel replied, 'Starving.' For a book.

The paper landed on the table, but the news was stapled to his chest. A tattoo.

Creo que a los humanos les gusta contemplar la destrucción a pequeña escala. Castillos de arena, castillos de naipes, por ahí empiezan. Su gran don es la capacidad de superación.

We're silent now, both waiting, till I remind myself that I'm the older one and should therefore initiate conversation. But I don't. I don't want to waste this girl with idle chitchat. She's beautiful.

He left Himmel Street wearing his hangover and a suit.

For a moment, I panic. It's that feeling of falling when you know without question, that you've lost control of your car, or made a mistake that's beyond repair. 'What do I do now?' I ask desperately. 'Tell me! What do I do now?' He remains calm. He looks at me closely and says, 'Keep living, Ed... It's only the pages that stop here.

Christ, it's defeaning. why can't the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn't care, I finally answer, and I know I'm right. It's like I have been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask. The answer's quite simple: To Care.... How do people live like this? How do they survive? And maybe that's why I am here. What if they can't anymore?

How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.

He watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany.... It was a nation of farmed thoughts.

Handfuls of frosty water can make almost anyone smile, but it cannot make them forget.

You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things. Liesel watched him as if he'd gone insane. How, though? Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. Memorize it. Then write it down for him.

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

I look at her wish we could go inside and make love on the couch. Dive inside each other. Take each other. Make each other. Nothing happens, though.

Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.

For some reason, dying men always ask questions they know the answer to. Perhaps it's so they can die being right.

Like most misery, it started out with apparent happiness. - The Book Thief

All that remained was to get to camp, learn English better, find a job and a place to live. Then, most importantly, buy a bookshelf. And a piano.

As I make my way through, I feel okayness reaching through me. The funny thing is that okayness is not a real word. It's not in the dictionary. But it's in me.

Quite frankly, so am I, because what I'm about to tell you is a fact. In this country, there is only one thing that can draw a crown without any shadow of a doubt. The answer? Beer. Free beer.

Me, I'm known for bruises and levelheadedness, for height and muscle and blasphemy, and the occasional sentimentality.

I did it because you are the epitome of ordinariness.