Markus Zusak Quotes
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.
Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.
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.
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.
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.
I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.
Liesel's blood had dried inside of her. It crumbled. She almost broke into pieces on the steps.
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.
No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.
It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.
The night is alive with stars, and when I lie down and look up, I get lost up there. I feel like I’m falling, but upward, into the abyss of sky above me.
If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.
Goodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read. No one can play like you. I'll never drink champagne. No one can play like you." -Liesel
That was when the world wasn't so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.
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.
Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father's eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver.
Winning wasn't natural for me. It had to be fought for, in the echoes and trodden footprints of my mind.
The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest.
She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.
Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.
Maybe one morning I’ll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.
A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children
I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.
Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.
The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable.