Quotes from Markus Zusak

She enjoyed the small fragments of pain.

For hours she sat with him as he shivered and slept. 'Don't die' she whispered. 'Please, Max, just don't die.' He was the second snowman to be melting away before her eyes, only this one was different. It was a paradox. The colder he became, the more he melted.

She tried to reassemble herself, to resemble herself...

That makes two weeks. Two weeks to change the world, and fourteen days to ruin it.

I told her about school and how I sat on a wall there and felt stories and words move through me ...

It makes me think of my life, my nonexistent accomplishments and my overall abilities in incompetence.

Papa would say a word and the girl would have to spell it aloud and then paint it on the wall, as long as she got it right. After a month, the wall was recoated. A fresh cement page.

The horizon was beginning to charcoal. What was left of the blackness above was nothing now but a scribble, and disappearing fast.

Nothing affects you, and you affect nothing.

The Keys To Happiness 1.Finishing the Grave Digger's Handbook. 2.Escaping the ire of Santa Maria. 3.Recieving two books for Christmas.

Does this worry you? I urge you—don't be afraid. I'm nothing if not fair.

The dilemma, of course, is that such people save their most important words for after, when the surrounding humans are unlucky enough to find them.

A pair of train guards. A pair of grave diggers. When it came down to it, one of them called the shots. The other did what he was told. The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one?

Junto a los escombros de Colonia, un grupo de niños recogía contenedores de combustible vacíos arrojados por sus enemigos. Como siempre, yo recogía humanos. Estaba cansada. Y apenas habíamos llegado a la mitad del año.

Carey liked the fact that Michelangelo had had his nose broken as a teenager, for being too much of a smart mouth; a reminder that he was human. A badge of imperfection.

Nice has nothing to do with me.

Whenever they had a break, to eat or drink, he would play the accordion, and it was this that Liesel remembered best. Each morning, while Papa pushed or dragged the paint cart, Liesel carried the instrument. Better that we leave the paint behind, Hans told her, than ever forget the music.

Personally, I like a chocolate-colored sky. Dark, dark chocolate. People say it suits me. I do, however, try to enjoy the whole spectrum. A billion or so flavors, none of them quite the same, and a sky to slowly suck on. It takes the edge off the stress. It helps me relax.

One eye open. One still in a dream

Oh, how the clouds stumbled in and assembled stupidly in the sky. Great obese clouds. Dark and plump. Bumping into each other. Apologizing. Moving on and finding room.

She was home, among the mayor's books of every color and description, with their silver and gold lettering. She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.

We only sit there now. Audrey and me. And discomfort. Squeezed in, between us. She soon says, "You're my best friend, Ed." "I know." You can kill a man with those words. No gun. No bullets. Just words and a girl.

I see their ugly and their beauty, and wonder how the same thing can be both.

Los mejores recolectores de palabras eran los que comprendían el verdadero poder de las palabras, los que subían más alto.