“Goodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read. No one can play like you. I'll never drink champagne. No one can play like you."-Liesel”

“And please," Ilsa Hermann advised her, "don't punish yourself, like you said you would. Don't be like me, Liesel.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Of course I told him about you," Liesel said. She was saying goodbye and she didn't even know it”

“One day, Liesel.' he said, 'you'll be dying to kiss me.”

“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.”