Markus Zusak, The Book Thief Quotes
A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.
Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.
I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.
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.
No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.
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.
It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.
If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.
There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty.
She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward.
Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.
I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.
A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children
He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.
It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.
The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.
...one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.
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.
The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.
You should know it yourself- a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.
The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.
Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. (p.36)
But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?
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.
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.
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.
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.
It would then be brought abruptly to an end, for the brightness had shown suffering the way.
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.)
Can a person steal happiness? Or is just another internal, infernal human trick?
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.
