Quotes by Markus Zusak

“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...”

“The Hubbermanns had two of their own (children), but they were older and had moved out...Soon they would be both in the war. One would be making bullets. The other would be shooting them.”

“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.”

“The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red.”

“For two days I went about my business. I travelled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.”

“On the ration cards of Nazi Germany, there was no listing for punishment, but everyone had to take their turn. For some it was death in a foreign country during the war. For others it was poverty a...”

“Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heart beat revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest?”

“And I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later - a vision in the book thief herself - that as she knelt next to Hans Hubermann, she watched him stand and play the ac...”

“One eye open. One still in a dream”

“I kept walking. Have you ever done that? Just walk. Just walk and have no idea where you're going? It wasn't a good feeling, but not a bad one either. I felt caged and free at the same time, like i...”

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

“Because you don't learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.”

“...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.”

“It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side - just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to wa...”

“... I felt something and vowed that if I ever got a girl I would treat her right and never be bad or dirty to her or hurt her, ever. I vowed it and had all the confidence in the world that I would ...”

“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.”

“You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things." Liesel watched him as if he'd gone insane. "How, though?" Lightly, he tapped her skull w...”

“Well, have you even tried again? You cant just sit around waiting for the new world to take it with you. You have to go out and be part of it - despite your past mistakes.”

“For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I'd started writing down, but I couldn't. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered oka...”

“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 wel...”