Markus Zusak

“The days and nights come apart. I feel them corroding at the seams.”

“It would then be brought abruptly to an end, for the brightness had shown suffering the way.”

“Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times.”

“Papa was an accordion. But his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out.”

“Saukerl," she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a Saumensch. I think that's as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.”

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

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

“Certainly war meant dying, but it always shifted the ground beneath a person's feet when it was someone who had once lived and breathed in close proximity.”

“The pages and the words are my world, spread out before your eyes and for your hand to touch. Vaguely, I can see you face looking down into me, as I look back. Do you see my eyes?”

“At first, all is black and white.Black on white.That's where I'm walking, through pages.These pages.Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of.”

“My mouth opened.It happened.Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling.Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions pored up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn't. I didn't care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, oh, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn't lie down.”

“I stood there and stared, into the sky and at the city around me. I stood, hands at my side, and I saw what had happened to me and who I was and the way things would always be for me. Truth. There was no more wishing, or wondering. I knew who I was, and what I would always do. I believed it, as my teeth touched and my eyes were overrun.”

“I had to decide what I was going to do, and what I was going to be.I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something , till I realised the person I was waiting for was myself.”

“Well, this is basically the end, so the answers should be in these next few pages. I doubt they will surprise you, but you never know. I don't know how smart or thick you are. You could be Albert Einstein for all I know, or some literary prizewinner, or maybe you're just middle of the road like me.”

“It is early, early morning. It's that time when it's still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.”

“My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.”

“I bet that guy was as obsessed with Sarah as I am with this other girl, and I bet he promised himself never to hurt her, just like I've been doin' - and look what he's done to her. He's left her a crumpled mess, lyin' on her bed all the time.”

“It's not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It's just that you know the person better, and you know they don't really care if you're acting like a poor, grovelling idiot. They know you would do the same for them.”

“All four of us were young and undaunted and our smiles were so strong that it made me smile even then on the couch, with a kind of loss.”

“... the city around us seemed colder than ever again, and I realised that even if it really had sensed something going on, it certainly didn't care. It moved forward again. I could feel it. I could almost hear it laugh and taste it. Close. Watching. Mocking. And it was cold, so cold, as it watched my sister bleeding at the back of our house.”

“The dog next-door had settled down, and the neighbourhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in our backyard. It was like it could sense it. It could sense some form of tragedy and helplessness being played out, and to tell you the truth, it all surprised me. I was so used to things just going on, oblivious and ignorant to all feeling.”

“Awkward.That's exactly how it was when we walked over to our sister and stood on each side of her, looking at her and feeling things and not knowing what to do.”

“Ljudi nemaju srce poput mojeg. Ljudsko srce je pravac, moje je kružnica,a imam i beskrajnu sposobnost da budem u pravo vrijeme na pravome mjestu.Slobodno tome, uvijek zatičem ljude u najboljen i najgorem izdanju. Vidim njihovu ružnoću i njihovu ljepotu, i pitam se kako ista stvar možebiti i jedno i drugo. Pa ipak, na jednome im zavidim.Ljudi su, ako ništa drugo, dovoljno razumni da umru.”

“Or had she always loved him? It's likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn't matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting.”

“Stars of David were plastered to their shirts, and misery was attached to them as if assigned. "Don't forget your misery..." In some cases, it grew on them like a vine.”

“The notes were born on her breath, and they died at her lips.”

“Me temo que nada finaliza realmente cuando llega el fin. Los recuerdos permanecen mientras son capaces de blandir su espada y encontrar un punto blando en la mente para hacer un tajo y penetrar en ella.”

“His eyes were cold and brown — like coffee stains…”

“Snowflakes of ash fell so lovelily you were tempted to stretch out your tongue to catch them, taste them. Only, they would have scorched your lips. They would have cooked your mouth.”

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

“What great malice there could be in allowing something to live.”

“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?”

“He watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany.... It was a nation of farmed thoughts.”

“There were stars. They burned my eyes.”

“A statue of the book thief stood in the courtyard... it's very rare, don't you think, for a statue to appear before it's subject has become famous?”

“Who was there to soothe him as life’s rug was snatched from under his sleeping feet?”

“The human child – so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.”

“There was also an acknowledgment that there was great beauty in what she was currently witnessing, and she chose not to disturb it.”

“They were frightened, no question, but they were not afraid of me. It was a fear of messing up and having to face themselves again, and facing the world, and the likes of you.”

“There must be aplace in heaven for those who have been where I have been.”

“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 this graze inside me? Do you see it before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything more.”

“Only hearts... They're in the inside of the inside of me.”

“***HERE IS A SMALL FACT *** You are going to die. 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.”

“The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?”

“He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. 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. This one was sent out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested. There was an itchy lung for a last cigarette and an immense, magnetic pull toward the basement, for the girl who was his daughter and was writing a book down there that he hoped to read one day.”

“Very suddenly. Yes, quite suddenly, I didn't feel like I could handle my feeling of aloneness.”

“See, I was never a guy who had a whole heap of friends to belong to. Besides Greg Fienni, I never really had friends. I kind of stayed on my own. I hated it, but I was proud of it too. Cameron Wolfe needed no one. He didn't need to be amongst a pack. Not all of us roam like that. No, all he needed was his instincts. All he needed was himself.”

“We don't need a point, son. We're juvenile, we're dirty, we don't have girls, we have noses full of snot, throats sore as hell, we've got scabs on us, we suffer bouts of acne, we've got no girls ... What more reasons do we need?”

“So I saw that there was only me. There was only me who could worry about what was happening here, inside these walls of my life. Other people had their own worlds to worry about, and in the end, they had to fend for themselves, just like us.”

“There were thousands of households throughout that city and there was something happening in all of them. There was some kind of story in each, but self-contained. No one else knew. No one else cared.”