Markus Zusak Quotes

page 4

“She rubbed her eyes, and after a long study of his face, she spoke
"Is it really you?"
Is it from your cheek, she thought, that I took the seed?
The man nodded.
His heart wobbled and he held tighter to the branches.
It is.”

“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.”

“Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.”

“How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.”

“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.”

“As always, she was carrying the washing. Rudy was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice.”

“If your eyes could speak, what would they say?.”

“Summer came.
For the books thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky was the color of Jews.”

“Clearly, I see it.
I was just about to leave when I found her kneeling there.
A mountain range of rubble was written, designed, erected around her. She was clucthing at a book.”

“I'd been in love with her for years. I never left this suburban town. I didn't go to university. I went to Audrey.”

“A NICE THOUGHT
One was a book thief.
The other stole the sky.”

“She places her hands around my neck and rests her head on my shoulder. I can smell the sex on her, and my hope is that she can smell the love on me.”

“Everything was good.
But it was awful, too.”

“It's my heart that is tired. A thirteen-year-old heart shouldn't feel like this.”

“I feel the fear, but I walk fast toward it.”

“Personally, I quite like that. Such stupid gallantry.
Yes. I like that a lot.”

“The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn’t be any of this. Without words, the Führer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make us feel better. What good were the words?”

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew.”

“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.”

“Maybe one morning I’ll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.”

“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.”

“Sometimes I just survive.
But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.”

“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.”

“You can do anything when it's not real.
When it is real, nothing breaks your fall. Nothing gets between you and the ground.”

“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.”

“She gave 'The Dream Carrier' to Max as if words alone could nourish him.”

“The water crumbles on it's way down as my hands and feet push me forward. The world is lightening, taking shape, and turning to color. It feels like it's being painted around me.”

“Things always seem to glide away.
They come to you, stay a moment, then leave again.”

“He prefers not to ruin things with any more questions. What it is is what it is.”

“Even enemies were an inch away from friendship.”

“Only hearts… They're in the inside of the inside of me.”

“An eleven-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.”

“I even move out onto the front porch and see my own limited view of the world. I want to take that world, and for the first time ever, I feel like I can do it. I’ve survived everything I’ve had to so far. I’m still standing here.”

“The conversation of bullets.”

“Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father's eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver.”

“Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out, like the rain. (p. 85)”

“There were not many people who could say that their education had been paid for with cigarettes.”

“At first, all is black and white.
Black on white.
That's where I'm walking, through pages.
These pages.
Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of.”

“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.”

“She gave her a reason to write her own words, to see that words had also brought her to life.
"Don't punish yourself," she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.”

“If her soul ever leaks, I want it to land on me.”

“The thrill of being ignored!”

“The silence was always the greates temptation.”

“The days and nights come apart. I feel them corroding at the seams.”

“One wild card was yet to be played.”

“I traveled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.”

“Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. (p.36)”

“Saumensch, du dreckiges—it’s about time!”