Of course you're real-like any thought or any story. It's real when you're in it.

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.

Wisdom is nothing more than confirmed imagination: just because one did not study for his exam does not mean that he should leave it blank.

Autumn is the bite of a harvest apple.

A free and open Internet should not have to be weighed down by legal challenges - its dynamism is essential to our economy.

I'm mischievous, but I'm calculated.

Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.

There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.

Nearly everyone I knew talked to me about God. They always warned me not to offend Him.

Not that they were there to have fun—although with Kingsley Martin around, fun was never far from the agenda.

The novel is more of a whisper, whereas the stage is a shout.

Every year it's one more step closer, and then at the end you get to the top and you fall back down. It's crazy.