Quotes from Markus Zusak

Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.

Even enemies were an inch away from friendship.

..As always, she was carrying the washing. Rudy was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice.

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.

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

Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay" we say. "I'm alright". But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer--it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.

The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever 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.

He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.

Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay" we say. "I'm alright". But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer--it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.

He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world. She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.

His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds 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 because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places.

Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

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. (Death)

She was saying goodbye and she didn't even know it.