When death captures me," the boy vowed, "he will feel my fist in his face." (31.26)

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.

Memory is curated. All this paraphernalia you collect to ward off forgetting

The burnt child dreads the fire.

I have spent the past ten years in just about every war zone there was.

Any set of decisions about design is inevitably influenced by cultural prejudice, no matter how intent an architect might be to avoid it.

What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal-I do not like your face, M. Ratchett.

The secret to having a good marriage is to understand that marriage must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization.

Feminist, whatever the definition, whatever you call yourself - I am, I'm not - none of us want little girls being forced into early marriage before they're 12.

By the time I'm out of makeup, I'm ready to act.

Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - THAT kind of love.