Quotes from Markus Zusak

I'm Angelina," she says. "Are you here to save us?" I can see a tiny spark of hope awaken in her eyes. "You're right, Angelina - I'm here to save you." "Can you? Really?" "I'll try," I say and the girl smiles.

Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.

July 24, 6:03 A.M. The laundry was warm and the rafters were firm, and Michael Holzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff... Michael Holzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for wanting to live.

It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words. You bastards, she thought. You lovely bastards. Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.

I'm asking you, I'm begging you, could you please shut your mouth for just five minutes? You can imagine the reaction. They ended up in the basement.

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

When he moves, a streetlight stabs him, and the words flow out like blood.

Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. 'There were stars,' He said. 'They burned my eyes.' ...from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.

There are hundreds of thoughts per every word spoken, and that's if they're spoken at all.

Tears were frozen to the book theif's face.

It's about glowing lights and small things that are big.

I can promise you that the world is a factory.  The sun stirs it, the humans rule it.  And I remain.  I carry them away.- spoken by death

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore.

It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice. As you may expect, someone has died.

Everything was good. But it was awful, too.

I feel the fear, but I walk fast toward it.

Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.

She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.

It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives? I don't know.

She rubbed her eyes, and after a long study of his face, she spoke Is it really you? Is it from your cheek, she thought, that I took the seed? The man nodded. His heart wobbled and he held tighter to the branches. It is.

Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones. Papa was an accordion! But his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out.

Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.