Quotes from Markus Zusak

Lastly, the Hubermanns. Hans. Papa. He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kind of souls always do--the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, I know who you are and I am ready. Not that i want to go, of course, but I will come. Those souls are always light becausre more of them have been put out............ Lisel. His soul whispered it as I carried him.

Each boy stood, slouched yet stiff, hands in pockets. If the dog had pockets, she'd have had her paws in them, too, for sure.

No veis la herida que tengo dentro? ¿No veis cómo se extiende y me corroe ante vuestros ojos? No quiero volver a tener esperanzas.

It was as though he'd opened her palm, given her the words, and closed it up again.

In the written words of the book thief herself, the journey continued like everything had happened.

How many times did she have to say goodbye?

On Munich Street, Rudy noticed Deutscher walking along the footpath with some friends and felt the need to throw a rock at him. You might as well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is probably nothing at all. He'd probably say that he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity.

moon was sewn into the sky that night. Clouds were stitched around it.

His eyes were cold and brown — like coffee stains…

Steam was rising weirdly from his clothes. His hangover was visible. It heaved itself to his shoulders and sat there like a bag of wet cement.

He was tall and abrupt and exactly the kind of guy you wanted to be walking the streets with.

The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

a young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow

They were virtuosos of alliteration and didn't know it.

He's waking her in every moment. Disturbing her. Reaching through her and abandoning her at the same time. He throws her down and takes her and cuts her open. The bedspring leaks - a howling, desperate noise of falling down and springing up, even though they don't want to. Refusal is pointless. Complaint has no use. Some crying crawls to the doorway where I stand. It hobbles out from the gap in the door and lands at my feet

I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.

Never had movement been such a burden. Never had a heart been so definite and big in her adolescent chest.

What good are the words?

Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, an in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me. Even in the night, in bed, they woke me. They painted themselves onto the ceiling. They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind. When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down , on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed color that morning.

Returning and being let in: Two very different things.

She didn't overreact. It may have crossed her mind to march down to the woman responsible for sending this charity shitbox, but she didn't. She swallowed the glint of anger. She packed it into her prim-and-proper voice, and like her son, moved on.

It could be worse. I could be you.

We admit to almost everything, and the almost is all that counts.

I told her I loved the howling sound of her harmonica. That seemed to be the limit of my courage that night, and even those spoken words had to struggle their way out of my mouth. It's all very well for words to build bridges, but sometimes I think it's a matter of knowing when to do it. Knowing when the time's right.