Markus Zusak Quotes

194 Sourced Quotes

I just know that right now, we want to be proud. For once. We want to take the struggle and rise above it. We want to frame it, live it, survive it. We want to put it in our mouths and taste it and never forget it, because it makes us strong.

Markus Zusak
The days and nights come apart. I feel them corroding at the seams.

Markus Zusak
A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT Please, be calm, despite that previous threat. I am all bluster - I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.

Markus Zusak
People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spot blues. Murky darkness. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them.

Markus Zusak
I'm asking you, I'm begging you, could you please shut your mouth for just five minutes?" You can imagine the reaction. They ended up in the basement.

Markus Zusak
You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things." Liesel watched him as if he'd gone insane. "How, though?" Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. "Memorize it. Then write it down for him.

Markus Zusak
I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away.- spoken by death

Markus Zusak
We're silent now, both waiting, till I remind myself that I'm the older one and should therefore initiate conversation. But I don't. I don't want to waste this girl with idle chitchat. She's beautiful.

Markus Zusak
I had to decide what I was going to do, and what I was going to be. I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something, till I realised the person I was waiting for was myself.

Markus Zusak
In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears.

Markus Zusak
Each night, Liesel would step outside, wipe the door, and watch the sky. Usually it was like spillage - cold and heavy, slippery and gray - but once in a while some stars had the nerve to rise and float, if only for a few minutes. On those nights, she would stay a little longer and wait. Hello, stars.

Markus Zusak
The human child – so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.

Markus Zusak
She looks at the swings, and I can see she's imagining what they'd look like if the kids weren't there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away, despite her love for them. I realize that nothing belongs to her anymore and she belongs to everything.

Markus Zusak
I traveled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.

Markus Zusak
The commitment had disappeared, and although he still watched the imagined glory of stealing, she could see now he was not believing. He was trying to believe it, and that's never a good sign.

Markus Zusak
Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

Markus Zusak
I look at her wish we could go inside and make love on the couch. Dive inside each other. Take each other. Make each other. Nothing happens, though.

Markus Zusak
An eleven-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.

Markus Zusak
As we walk back, it feels like the city is engulfing us. Adrenalin still pours through our veins. Sparks flow through to our fingers. We've still been running in the mornings, but the city's different then. It's filled with hope and with bristles of winter sunshine. In the evening, it's like it dies, waiting to be born again the next morning.

Markus Zusak
Shadows of cloud lurked in the water, like holes the sun forgot about.

Markus Zusak
My arms are killing me. I didn't know words could be so heavy.

Markus Zusak
Why can't the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn't care, I finally answer, and I know I'm right. It's like I've been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask.

Markus Zusak
Maybe one morning I'll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.

Markus Zusak
A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

Markus Zusak
First the colours. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.

Markus Zusak
It's all very well for such a person to whine and moan and criticize other family members, but they won't let anyone else do it. That's when you get your back up and show loyalty.

Markus Zusak
Liesel crossed the bridge over the Amper River. The water was glorious and emerald and rich. She could see the stones at the bottom and hear the familiar song of water. The world did not deserve such a river.

Markus Zusak
I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

Markus Zusak
She let herself love me for three minutes. Can three minutes last forever? I ask myself, but already know the answer. Probably not, I reply. But maybe they last long enough.

Markus Zusak
Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.

Markus Zusak