One wild card was yet to be played.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

… it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger. The sky was dripping. Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.

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

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.

I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.

Please, trust me, I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.

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

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

I knew I was a little different from most demons but nothing says freak of nature like a one-eyed gypsy saying I had a rainbow glow. It just didn't sound complimentary.

Darwin may have been quite correct in his theory that man descended from the apes of the forest, but surely woman rose from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot.

In the end… he would choose Campisi.In the end… she would choose Abandonato.In the end… there would be bloodshed.

Some people are asking me questions like this is a more shocking subject, which is so strange.

The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

I realize then that it's not enough to know what someone is called. You have to know who they are.

Whatever has been achieved through pressure and violence is unstable, unreliable and incorrect.

Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed.

In doing what I'm doing, you have to be sensitive to the fact that you're not dealing with numbers, you're dealing with people. And I will continue to be sensitive to that.

Too many people are buying gifts for themselves when they pick out a gift for a friend.