Markus Zusak Quotes

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

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.

Sometimes people are beautifulNot in looksNot in what they sayJust in what they are

Why can’t the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn’t care, I finally answer, and I know I’m right. It’s like I’ve been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask.

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.

I could smell something. Fear.I could taste it now.It tasted like blood in my mouth, and I could feel it slide through me and open me up when I saw him ...

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.

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

When death tells a story yo really have to listen

It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice. As you may expect, someone has died.

a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.

Their heartbeats fought each other, a mess of rhythm. Liesel tried to eat hers down. The taste of heart was not too cheerful.

That’s when I have to ask him. “Can you really talk like that? Being holy and all?”“What? Because I’m a priest?” He finishes the dregs of his coffee. “Sure. God knows what’s important.

The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.

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

Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.

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. . .

The only people we want to blame are ourselves, because it will be ourselves that we rely upon.

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.

I wanted to drown inside a woman in the feeling and drooling of the love I could give her. I wanted her pulse to crush me with its intensity. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted myself to be.

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

The paper landed on the table, but the news was stapled to his chest. A tattoo.

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

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

She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward.

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.

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

I actually feel quite self-indulgent at the moment, telling you all about me, me, me.(...) On the other hand, you're a human -you should understand self obsession.

It's not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It's just that you know the person better, and you know they don't really care if you're acting like a poor, grovelling idiot. They know you would do the same for them.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

I'm just another stupid human.

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.

There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty.

There were thousands of households throughout that city and there was something happening in all of them. There was some kind of story in each, but self-contained. No one else knew. No one else cared.

Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay" we say. "I'm alright". But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer--it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.

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.

Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.

I told her I loved the howling sound of her harmonica. That seemed to be the limit of my courage that night, and even those spoken words had to struggle their way out of my mouth. It's all very well for words to build bridges, but sometimes I think it's a matter of knowing when to do it. Knowing when the time's right.

I love the laughter of this night. 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. For now, just let us run. We run straight through the laughter of the night.

When I picked him up originally, the boy's spirit was soft and cold, like ice-cream. He started melting in my arms. Then warming up completely. Healing.

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

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.

It could be worse. I could be you.

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 wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what couldI 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.

All four of us were young and undaunted and our smiles were so strong that it made me smile even then on the couch, with a kind of loss.

The moon was sewn into the sky that night

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.

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.

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.

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.

I bet that guy was as obsessed with Sarah as I am with this other girl, and I bet he promised himself never to hurt her, just like I've been doin' - and look what he's done to her. He's left her a crumpled mess, lyin' on her bed all the time.

Can a person steal happiness? Or is just another internal, infernal human trick?

Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.

As we walk back, it feels like the city is engulfing us. Adrenalin still pours through our veins. Sparks flow through to our fingers. We've still been running in the mornings, but the city's different then. It's filled with hope and with bristles of winter sunshine. In the evening, it's like it dies, waiting to be born again the next morning.