Quotes from Markus Zusak

In the case of 'The Book Thief,' my research was hearing the stories of my parents when I was a child. But I started changing the stories when I began moulding the book.

For 'The Book Thief,' I wanted only one outcome, and that was for the director to follow his own vision, just as I had.

I was lucky: I feel like I've written four books that mean something to me, and one book that means everything to me, and that's 'The Book Thief.'

I'm gonna hunt my life down and grab it.

The first book I remember loving was 'Grug and the Big Red Apple.' The first film I saw in the cinema was 'Grease.'

Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or to forget? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives?

The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.

It's a lot easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.

That's typically what writers do; we just sit around complaining most of the time. And the better things are going, the more they complain.

I see Death as the part of us that knows all the time that we're going to die, reminding us to live properly.

Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.

She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.

I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.

I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.

Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.

It's a small story really, about, among other things: * A girl * Some words * An accordionist * Some fanatical Germans * A Jewish fist fighter * And quite a lot of thievery

She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward.

I'd rather chase the sun than wait for it.

The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.

As always, one of her books was next to her.

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. There are many things to think of. There is much story.