Markus Zusak Quotes

What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me!
But you're far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it's here. It's now. I have to go through with this, considering the cost at every turn. Nothing will be the same.

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

That was when the world wasn't so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.

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.

I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing — that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing — when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning.

On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy Steiner was robbery — so much life, so much to live for — yet somehow, I'm certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. He'd have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. He'd have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips.
Yes, I know it.
In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it all right.
You see?
Even death has a heart.

You’re a human, you should understand self-obsession.

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.

She kept watching the words.

"How does it feel, anyway?"
How does what feel?"
When you take one of those books?"
At that moment, she chose to keep still. If he wants an answer, he'd have to come back, and he did. "Well?" he asked, but again, it was the boy who replied, before Liesel could even open her mouth.
It feels good, doesn't it? To steal something back.

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race — that rarely do I ever 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.

None of those things, however, came out of my mouth.

All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you.

I am haunted by humans.

They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.

"How about a kiss, Saumensch?"

He stood waist-deep in the water for a few moments longer before climbing out and handing her the book. His pants clung to him, and he did not stop walking. 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.

Liesel's blood had dried inside of her. It crumbled. She almost broke into pieces on the steps.