Markus Zusak Quotes

When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.

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.

What do you want to kiss me for? I'm filthy.'- Liesel So am I.'- Rudy

They'd been standing like that for thirty seconds of forever.

He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

...one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.

It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.

She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.

He killed himself for wanting to live.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

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

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

...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

It is early, early morning. It's that time when it's still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.

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

I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.

When I was a teenager I decided I was going to be a writer and that nothing was going to stop me. It sounds almost villainous. But I knew that was what I wanted.

I look at her wish we could go inside and make love on the couch. Dive inside each other. Take each other. Make each other. Nothing happens, though.

I like to tell students, 'I didn't burst on to the literary scene.' I'm never good at things at the beginning. I was terrible at the start. I need to work and work.

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

It's not a big thing, but I guess it's true--big things are often just small things that are noticed.

Very suddenly. Yes, quite suddenly, I didn't feel like I could handle my feeling of aloneness.

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.

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

Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.

I am hunted by humans.

A fighter can be a winner, but that doesn't make a winner a fighter.

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.

One day, Liesel.' he said, 'you'll be dying to kiss me.

It's funny, don't you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out.

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.

Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me.

I think 'The Lord Of The Rings' is the mother of all cult books, because you can be in that cult and not even know you're in it.

Yes, I know it. In the darkness of my dark beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it alright. You see? Even Death Has A Heart.

It's about glowing lights and small things that are big.

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

Because you don't learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.

And then there's the sickness I feel from looking at legs I can't touch, or at lips that don't smile at me. Or hips that don't reach for me. And hearts that don't beat for me.

If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive.

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.

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

for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

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

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

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

Shadows of cloud lurked in the water, like holes the sun forgot about.

Death waits for no man - and if he does, he doesn't usually wait for very long.

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.