Markus Zusak - The Book Thief (2005)

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

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

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
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'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
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
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
You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. find yourself a mirror while I continue.

Markus Zusak
One opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.

Markus Zusak
What do you want to kiss me for? I'm filthy.'- Liesel So am I.'- Rudy

Markus Zusak
Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.

Markus Zusak
I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor.

Markus Zusak
The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it's stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole...

Markus Zusak
He watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany.... It was a nation of farmed thoughts.

Markus Zusak
The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs.

Markus Zusak
The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.

Markus Zusak
There was once a strange, small man. He decided three important details about his life: 1. He would part his hair from the opposite side to everyone else. 2. He would make himself a small, strange mustache. 3. He would one day rule the world....Yes, the Fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words.

Markus Zusak
It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them

Markus Zusak
A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

Markus Zusak
How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.

Markus Zusak
A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way-I like this human idea of the grim reaper. I like the scythe. It amuses me.)

Markus Zusak
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.

Markus Zusak
Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear.

Markus Zusak
Yes, I know it. In the darkness of my dark beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it alright. You see? Even Death Has A Heart.

Markus Zusak
He was waving. "Saukerl," she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a Saumensch. I think that's as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.

Markus Zusak
The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?

Markus Zusak
Personally, I like a chocolate-colored sky, dark, dark chocolate.

Markus Zusak
You don't always get what you wish for. Especially in Nazi Germany

Markus Zusak
You might argue that I make the rounds no matter what year it is, but sometimes the human race likes to crank things up a little. They increase the production of bodies and their escaping souls.

Markus Zusak