Markus Zusak Quotes

He was skinny with soft hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger played one more song in the heavy room. From face to face, he looked on as the man played and the woman wept. The different notes handled her eyes. Such sadness.

I guess when someone tells you something they they usually guard, you feel privileged, not because you know something no-one else knows, but because you feel chosen. You feel like that person wants her life to intersect with yours. I think that's what felt best about it.

It feels nice to emerge from the lies.

Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?"At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. 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.Years ago, when they'd raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death.Of course I told him about you," Liesel said.

Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a licence?

People observe the colors of a day at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quiet clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment.

She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.

The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.

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.

And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled.I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well.The hunger.The desire.Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth.

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.

Right. That's twenty-two fifty.""Twenty-two fifty?" We can't hide our exasperation."Well, yeah - this is a classy joint, you know.""That's obvious - the service is incredible.

Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten up by his own shadow, you realize maybe that in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it. Maybe that's what these pages of words are about. Bringing the world to the window.

He was the second snowman to be melting away before her eyes, only this one was different. It was a paradox. The colder he became, the more he melted.

Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?

It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.

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 walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side.

Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave.

Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, an in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me. Even in the night, in bed, they woke me.They painted themselves onto the ceiling.They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind.When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down , on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed color that morning.

They're brainless girls, otherwise they wouldn't be seen dead here. They're pretty, with ugly, appealing smiles and conversations we can't hear. They breathe smoke and blow it out, and words drop from their mouths and get crushed to the floor. Or they get discarded, just to glow with warmth for a moment, for someone else to tread on later.

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

A happening was looming. It was out there somewhere beyond the regular enclosed life that I had been living. It was out there, not waiting, but existing. Being. Perhaps it was only slightly wondering if I would come to it.

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.

No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.

If your eyes could speak, what would they say?

DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children

A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way-I like this human idea of the grim reaper. I like the scythe. It amuses me.)

For a good ten minutes or so we stand there with the flashlight burning the grave with light. The whole time, I'm trying to guess where and exactly how he died and, more to the point, realizing that poor old Milla's been without him for sixty-years. I can tell. No other man has entered her life. Not the way her Jimmy did. She's been waiting sixty years for Jimmy to come back. And now he has.

One eye open. One still in a dream

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.

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

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

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

Even death has a heart.

The word maybe was beginning to annoy me, because the only thing that was fixed was that maybe would be with me forever.

I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.

The Proclaimers thunder through my head.Imagine it.Imagine killing someone to the tune of two Scottish nerds wearing glasses and flattop haircuts. How will I ever listen to that song again? What will I do if it comes on the radio? I'll think of the night I murdered another man and stole his life with my own hands.

One good punch from Rube on me would send the sky into my head and the clouds into my lungs. I just always tried to stay up.

You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all.He'd probably say he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity.

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.

It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives? I don't know.

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.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

Rudy handed it back. "Speaking of which, I think we're both slightly in for it when we get home. You especially.""Why me?""You know- your mama.""What about her?" Liesel was exercising the blatant right of every person who's ever belonged to a family. It's all very well for such a person to whine and moan and criticize other family members, but they won't let anyone else do it. That's when you get your back up and show loyalty.

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.

Death's Diary: 1942 -It was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to just name a few. Forget the scythe, God damn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a holiday.(...) They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. 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.

She looks at the swings, and I can see she’s imagining what they’d look like if the kids weren’t there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away, despite her love for them.I realize that nothing belongs to her anymore and she belongs to everything.

A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.

Personally, I think sex should be like math.At school.No one really cares if they're crap at math. They even proclaim it. They'll say to anyone, "Yeah, I don't mind science and English, but I'm absolutely shithouse at math." And other people will laugh and say,"Yeah, me too. I would have a clue about all that logarithm shit. You should be able to say that about sex too. You should be proudly able to say, "Yeah I wouldn't have a clue about all that orgasm shit, ay. I'm okay at everything else but when it comes to that part I wouldn't have a clue.

I watched the sky as it turned from silver to grey to the colour of rain. Even the clouds tried to look the other way.

A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

I'm just another stupid human.

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.

Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that is was a living hell. It wasn't. But is sure as hell wasn't heaven, either.

It's lucky I was there. Then again, who am I kidding? I'm in most places at least once, and in 1943, I was just about everywhere.

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 okayness in my ear. I didn't speak it, to anyone.

It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but the night who had blocked the way.

sometimes the human race likes to crank things up a little. They increase the production of bodies and their escaping souls.

I'd seen glimpses of a different me. It was a different me because in those increments of time I thought I actually became a winner.The truth, however, is painful.It was a truth that told me with a scratching internal brutality that I was me, and that winning wan't natural for me. It had to be fought for, in the echoes and trodden footprints of my mind. In a way, I had to scavenge for moments of alrightness.

Death waits for no man - and if he does, he doesn't usually wait for very long.