Markus Zusak

“The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores - like bandaids had been ripped off to expose the city's skin.”

“Not a beauty queen. Not one of those. You know the ones. She was real.”

“The happening that happened was that I met this girl ...”

“... 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 keep the vow.”

“Best friends one, and now we have almost nothing to say to each other. It was interesting, how he had joined those guys and I just stayed on my own. I didn't like it or dislike it. It was just funny that things had turned out that way.”

“He was into the skating culture now and I was into, well, I'm not sure what I was into. I was into roaming around on my own, and I enjoyed it.”

“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.”

“I wanted nothing for free.Nothing came for free at our place anyway.”

“I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That's the smile I was smiling.”

“The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it's stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun islike a yellow hole. . .”

“She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.They breathed.German and Jewish lungs.”

“I don't really know that this story has a whole lot of things happen in it. It doesn't really. It's just a record of how things were in my life during this last winter. I guess things happened, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

“To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly: “Get it done, get it done.” So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.”

“People observe the colours of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite clear that day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colours.”

“It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.”

“Rosa Hubermann was sitting on the edge of the bed with her husband's accordion tied to her chest. Her fingers hovered above the keys. She did not move. She didn't ever appear to be breathing.”

“Stealing it, in a sick kind of sense, was like earning it.”

“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.”

“Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.”

“Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children.”

“Big things are often just little things that people notice.”

“The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.”

“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 with his knuckles. "Memorize it. Then write it down for him.”

“The sky was white but deteriorating fast. As always, it was becoming an enormous drop sheet. Blood was bleeding through, and in patches, the clouds were dirty, like footprints in melting snow.Footprints? you ask.Well, I wonder whose those could be.”

“Steam was rising weirdly from his clothes. His hangover was visible. It heaved itself to his shoulders and sat there like a bag of wet cement.”

“أحياناً تقوم بقراءة كتاب من روعته تريد اصطحابه معك لعدة شهور بعد الانتهاء منه حتى لا يبتعد عنك”

“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 he hoped to read one day. Liesel. His soul whispered it as I carried him. But there was no Liesel in that house. Not for me, anyway.”

“Sitting on the ground, she looked up at her best friend. "Danke," she said. "Thank you." Rudy bowed. "My pleasure." He tried for a little more. "No point asking if I get a kiss for that, I guess?" "For bringing my shoes, which you left behind?" "Fair enough." He held up his hands and continued speaking as they walked on, and Liesel made a concerted effort to ignore him. She only heard the last part. "Probably wouldn't want to kiss you anyway -- not if your breath's anything like your shoes." "You disgust me," she informed him, and she hoped he couldn't see the escaped beginnings of a smile that had fallen from her mouth.”

“What I like best is walking with my hands in my pockets, having the Doorman next to me, and imagining that Audrey's on my other side.I always picture us from behind.”

“When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann's feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy. Two giant words...I'm sorry.”

“Liesel crossed the bridge over the Amper River. The water was glorious and emerald and rich. She could see the stones at the bottom and hear the familiar song of water. The world did not deserve such a river.”

“The first couple of times, he simply stayed - a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered “Shhh, I’m here, its alright.” After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness.”

“If I ever leave this place-I'll make sure I'm better HERE first.”

“An attribute of Rosa Hubermann, she was a good woman for a crisis.”

“Beautiful women are the torment of my existence.”

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

“When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.”

“Around us I can sniff out a savagery in the noisy southern air. It knifes it's way into my nose, but I do not bleed blood. It's fear I bleed, and it gushes out over my lip. I wipe it away, in a hurry.”

“It's the sound of my breathing that gets me, pouring down into my lungs and then tripping back up my throat.”

“We smell the impact of traffic and humans. Humans and traffic. Back and forth. We taste our moment, swallowing it, knowing it. We feel our nerves twitching inside our stomaches, lunging at our skin from beneath.”

“Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.”

“All told, she owned fourteen books, but she saw her story as being made up predominantly of ten of them. Of those ten, six were stolen, one showed up at the kitchen table, two were made for her by a hidden Jew, and one was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon.”

“Liesel and Papa made their way through the book, this man was traveling to Amsterdam on business and the snow was shivering outside. The girl loved that- the shivering snow. "That's exactly what it does when it comes down," she told Hans Hubermann.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph”

“The silence was always the greates temptation.”

“It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them”

“People have defining moments, i suppose, especially when they're children.”

“She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.”

“A GUIDED TOUR OF SUFFERING: To your left, perhaps your right, perhaps even straight ahead, you find a small black room. In it sits a Jew. He is scum. He is starving. He is afraid. Please - try not to look away.”

“There was no one to really argue with, but Mama managed it expertly every chance she had. She could argue with the entire world in that kitchen and almost every evening, she did.”