...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

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.

Maturity and experience are part of my liberation.

So I like to make music, and I like to share music. This is also a gift.

It's more important to promote a culture of life. What I mean by that is that I believe what we need to do is not change the law, but change hearts.

The experience of bliss can be the purest one of all and therefore the closest to God.

The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it.

I think that's what the war photography did for me. It showed me the human side of people and how certain circumstances can change people's lives.

She taught me everything I knew about crawfish and kissing and pink wine and poetry. She made me different.

At the bottom of all patriotism there is war: that is why I am no patriot.

Now that is dangerous, when the people don't know what's happening to their Constitution.

Find your passion, learn how to add value to it, and commit to a lifetime of learning.