Markus Zusak - The Messenger (2002)

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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
She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears.

Markus Zusak
Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. 'There were stars,' He said. 'They burned my eyes.'...from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.

Markus Zusak
We both laugh and run and the moment is so thick around me that i feel like dropping into it to let it carry me.

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
I think she ate a salad and some soup. And loneliness. She ate that, too.

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

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
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
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
He prefers not to ruin things with any more questions. What it is is what it is.

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

Markus Zusak
I'd been in love with her for years. I never left this suburban town. I didn't go to university. I went to Audrey.

Markus Zusak
I want to talk to him. I want to ask him about that girl and if he loved her and still misses her. Nothing, however, exits my mouth. How well do we really let ourselves know each other? There's a long quietness until I finally break it open. It reminds me of someone breaking bread and handing it out. In my case, I hand out a question to my friend.

Markus Zusak
I even move out onto the front porch and see my own limited view of the world. I want to take that world, and for the first time ever, I feel like I can do it. I've survived everything I've had to so far. I'm still standing here.

Markus Zusak
Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don't know what to say or what to do.

Markus Zusak
It's not a big thing, but I guess it's true—big things are often just small things that are noticed.

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

Markus Zusak
Outside is dark. The kitchen light is loud. It deafens me as I walk towards it.

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
When we move apart, she looks at me again, till a small tear lifts itself up in her eye. It trips out to find a wrinkle and follows it down.

Markus Zusak
The Gunman is useless. I know it. He knows it. The whole bank knows it.

Markus Zusak
Have you ever noticed that idiots have a lot of friends? It's just an observation.

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

Markus Zusak
As she watched all of this, Liesel was certain that these were the poorest souls alive. That's what she wrote about them... Some looked appealingly at those who had come to observe their humiliation, this prelude to their deaths. Others pleaded for someone, anyone to step forward and catch them in their arms. No one did.

Markus Zusak
Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.

Markus Zusak
I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.

Markus Zusak