Markus Zusak

“His eyes did not do anything that shock normally describes. No snapping, no slapping, no jolt. Those things happen when you wake from a bad dream, not when you wake into one.”

“In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief's kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.”

“They're the ones I can't stand to look at, although on occasion I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.”

“Her wrinkles were like slander. Her voice was akin to a beating with a stick.”

“There was the gate next, which she(Liesel)clung to. A gang of tears trudged from her eyes as she held on and refused to go inside. People started to gather on the street, until Rosa Hubermann swore at them, after which they reversed back whence they came. ~A TRANSLATION OF ROSA HUBERMANN’S ANNOUNCEMENT~‘What are you arseholes looking at?”

“The Standover Man. all my life, I've been scared of men standing over me. I suppose my first standover man was my father, but he vanished before I could remember him. For some reason when I was a boy, I liked to fight. a lot of the time, I lost. Another boy, sometimes with blood falling from his nose, would be standing over me. Many years later, I needed to hide. I tried not to sleep because I as afraid of who might be there when I woke up. But I was lucky. It was always my friend.When I was hiding. I dreamed of a certain man. The hardest was when I traveled to find him. Out of sheer luck and many footsteps, I made it. I slept there for a long time. Three days, they told me...and what did I find when I woke up? Not a man, but someone else standing over me. As time passed by the girl and I realized we had things in common. But there is one strange thing. The girl says I look like something else. Now I live in a basement. Bad dreams still live in my sleep. One night, after my usual nightmare, a shadow stood above me. She said, "Tell me what you dream of." So I did. In return, she explained what her own dreams were made of. Now I think we are friends, this girl and me. It was she who gave me a gift - to me. It makes me understand that the best standover man I've ever known is not a man at all...”

“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 accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Liesel Meminger one last time as the sky was slowly taken away from her.”

“Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye”

“The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words.”

“And I'm not too great at that sort of comforting thing, especially when my hands are cold and the bed is warm. I carried him softly through the broken street, with one salty eye and a heavy, deathly heart. With him I tried a little harder. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next door neighbour. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”

“The injury of words.Yes, the brutality of words.”

“It’s just… I wish it was easier, for me, you know?” I make a special point not to look at her. “I wish it was someone else who was chosen for this. Someone competent. If only I didn’t stop that robbery. I wish I didn’t have to go through with it all.” It comes gushing out, with words like spilled milk. “And I wish it was me with you and not that other guy. I wish it was my own skin touching with yours…”And there you have it.Stupidity in its purest form.“Oh, Ed.” Audrey looks away. “Oh, Ed.”Our feet dangle.I watch them, and I watch the jeans on Audrey’s legs.We only sit there now.Audrey and me.And discomfort.Squeezed in, between us.She soon says, “You’re my best friend, Ed.”“I know.”You can kill a man with those words.No gun.No bullets.Just words and a girl.”

“Somewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces. Each half was glowing, and beating under all that white.”

“Liesel was sure her mother carried the memory of him, slung over her shoulder. She dropped him. She saw his feet and legs and body slap the platform.”

“Within minutes, mounds of concrete and earth were stacked and piled. The streets were ruptured veins. Blood streamed till it was dried on the road, and the bodies were stuck there, like driftwood after the flood.”

“Fear is shiny. Ruthless in the eyes.”

“Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father's eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver.”

“One wild card was yet to be played.”

“Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don't know what to say or what to do.”

“When finally she finished and stood herself up, he put his arm around her, best-buddy style, and they walked on. There was no request for a kiss. Nothing like that. You can love Rudy for that, if you like.”

“The soft-spoken words fell off the side of the bed, emptying to the floor like powder.”

“Of course you're real-like any thought or any story. It's real when you're in it.”

“We both laugh and run and the moment is so thick around me that i feel like dropping into it to let it carry me.”

“My voice is like a rumour. I'm not sure if it came out or not, or if it is true.”

“THE LAST WORDS OF MAX VANDENBURG: You've done enough.”

“for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.”

“A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT Please, be calm, despite that previous threat. I am all bluster - I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.”

“Late in February, she stood on Munich Street and watched a single giant cloud come over the hills like a white monster. It climbed the mountains. The sun was eclipsed, and in its place, a white beast with a gray heart watched the town.”

“Personally, I quite like that. Such stupid gallantry.Yes. I like that a lot.”

“You don't always get what you wish for. Especially in Nazi Germany”

“What good are the words?”

“If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive.”

“The nightmares arrived like they always did, much like the best player in the opposition when you've heard rumors that he might be injured or sick-but there he is, warming up with the rest of them, ready to take the field.”

“You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. find yourself a mirror while I continue.”

“I'm not the messenger at all. I'm the message. ”

“If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did, then maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of. ”

“My heart applauds inside my ears, first like a roaring crowd, then slows and slows until it's a solitary person, clapping with unbridled sarcasm. Clap. Clap.Clap.Well done, Ed.Well given up. ”

“Believe it or not--it takes a lot of love to hate you like this.”

“It's much easier . . . to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.”

“Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness.”

“Better that we leave the paint behind," Hans told her, "than ever forget the music.”

“Steadily, the room shrank, till the book thief could touch the shelves within a few small steps. She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them. One shelf against the other. And she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat, and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again. How many books had she touched? How many had she felt? She walked over and did it again, this time much slower, with her hand facing forward, allowing the dough of her palm to feel the small hurdle of each book. It felt like magic, like beauty, as bright lines of light shone down from a chandelier. Several times, she almost pulled a title from its place but didn't dare disturb them. They were too perfect.”

“When I recollect her, I see a long list of colors, but it's the three in which I saw her in the flesh that resonate the most. Sometimes I manage to float far above those three moments. I hang suspended, until a septic truth bleeds toward clarity. That's when I see them formulate:THE COLORS RED: [rectangle]WHITE: [circle]BLACK: [swastika]They fall on top of each other. The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red.”

“You can kill a man with those words.No gun. No bullets. Just words and a girl.”

“A small fact:You are going to die....does this worry you?”

“I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty and I wonder how the same can be both.”

“I'll never forget the first day in Auschwitz, the first time in Mauthausen. At that second place, as time wore on, I also picked them up from the bottom of the great cliff, when their escapes fell awfully awry. There were broken bodies and dead m sweet hearts. Still, it was better than the gas. Some of them I caught when they were only halfway down, Saved you, I'd think, holding their souls in midair as the rest of their being-their physical shells-plummeted to the earth. All of them were like, like the cases of empty walnuts. Smoky sky in those places. The smell like a stove, but still so cold. ”

“Summer came. For the books thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews. ”

“Then came Hitler. ”

“So many humans. So many colors.”