Markus Zusak, The Book Thief Quotes
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.
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 rain.
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.
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.
Well, have you even tried again? You can’t just sit around waiting for the new world to take it with you. You have to go out and be part of it - despite your past mistakes.
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.
Can a person steal happiness? Or is just another internal, infernal human trick?
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.
The question is, what colour will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?
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.
I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right. - Liesel Meminger
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. . .
It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.
A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.
The paper landed on the table, but the news was stapled to his chest. A tattoo.
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
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.)
Death waits for no man - and if he does, he doesn't usually wait for very long.
The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.
Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.
Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heart beat revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest?
It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.
Their heartbeats fought each other, a mess of rhythm. Liesel tried to eat hers down. The taste of heart was not too cheerful.
No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.
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.
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.
Papa!” she whispered. “I have no eyes!”He patted the girl’s hair. She’d fallen into his trap. “With a smile like that, ” Hans Hubermann said, “you don’t need eyes.
The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.
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.
...one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.
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.
He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.
the threat of Jewish competition was taken away, but so were the Jewish customers
There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty.
A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children
Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
