Markus Zusak Quotes - Page 3

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.

Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want.""What's that, Ritchie?"His answer is simple."To want.

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

Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones. Papa was an accordion! But his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out.

Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.

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. . .

You should know it yourself- a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.

Have you ever noticed that idiots have a lot of friends? It's just an observation.

...to swear with a ferocity that can only be described as a talent.

If you're optimistic, think of it as bronze.

My arms are killing me. I didn't know words could be so heavy.

... because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it. It's the ones in between that test you. They're the ones that bring questions with them.

It was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to name just a few. Forget the scythe, Goddamn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a vacation.

I love and hate this place because it is full of words.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

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

... none of them had it. They had no qualms about stealing, but they needed to be told. They liked to be told, and Viktor Chemmel liked to be the teller. It was a nice microcosm.

They sat a few meters apart, speaking very rarely, and there was really only the noise of turning pages (…) Where Hans Hubermann and Erik Vandenburg were ultimately united by music, Max and Liesel were held together by the quiet gathering of words."Hi, Max.""Hi, Liesel."They would sit and read.

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.

Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.

But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?

You know,' she begins, 'you fellas ought to be looking after each other.' Her comment makes me realise that through the lies, the greatest irony is that we are looking out for each other. It's just that in the end, we're letting her down. That's what injures us.

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

Steve, on the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn't bleed for any of them, because he wouldn't trust them to bleed for him. In that way he's just as alone as me.

For at least twenty minutes, she handed out the story.

The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.

It's pathetic how a man can stand by and do nothing as a whole nation cleans out the garbage and makes itself great"-Hans Junior

He killed himself for wanting to live.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career.

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.

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

He switched off the light, came back and sat in the chair. In the darkness, Liesel kept her eyes open. She was watching the words.

She didn't see him watching as he played, having no idea that Hans Hubermann's accordion was a story. In the times ahead, that story would arrive at 33 Himmel Street in the early hours of morning, wearing ruffled shoulders and a shivering jacket. It would carry a suitcase, a book, and two questions. A story. Story after story. Story within story.

That paper--it sits there, open at the employment section. It sits there like a war, and each small advertisement is another trench for a person to dive into. To hope and fight in.

The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.

On the ration cards of Nazi Germany, there was no listing for punishment, but everyone had to take their turn. For some it was death in a foreign country during the war. For others it was poverty and guilt when the war was over, when six million discoveries were made throughout Europe.

She was like a lone angel floating above the surface of the earth, laughing with delight because she could fly but crying out of loneliness.

Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

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.

I carried [Rudy] softly through the broken street...with him I tried a little harder [at comforting]. 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 neighbor. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.

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.

That's typically what writers do; we just sit around complaining most of the time. And the better things are going, the more they complain.

It’s chaos out there, and chaos is what we need.

And you're Cameron Wolfe. That' gotta start meaning somethin' boy. That's gotta start churnin' inside us, making us wanna be someone for those names, and not just another couple of guys who amounted to nothin' but what people said we would. No way. We're getting' out of that. We have to. We're gonna crawl and moan and fight and bite and bark at anything that gets in our way or tries to hunt us down and shoot us. All right?

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.

In that one stolen second, I considered the Glebe girl. She entered my mind like a burglar, them vanished again, taking nothing. It was like the humiliation of the past had been dragged instantly from my back and left somewhere on the ground.

It kills me sometimes, how people die.

We used to languish when we walked, or sidle down the street like dogs that have just done something wrong. Now Rube walks upright, because he's on the attack.

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

The city buildings in the distance are holding up the sky, it seems.

... And the boy whose hair remained the color of lemons forever.

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?

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

If someone wanted to be a runner, you don't tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.

the threat of Jewish competition was taken away, but so were the Jewish customers

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help.