Markus Zusak Quotes

Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones. Papa was an accordion! But his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out.

~ Markus Zusak

Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

~ Markus Zusak

The bombs were coming-and so was I.

~ Markus Zusak

It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice. As you may expect, someone has died.

~ Markus Zusak

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

~ Markus Zusak

Death waits for no man - and if he does, he doesn't usually wait for very long.

~ Markus Zusak

Death's Diary: 1942 -It was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to just name a few. Forget the scythe, God damn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a holiday.(...) They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly. 'Get it done, get it done'. So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss however, does not thank you. He asks for more.

~ Markus Zusak

I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come. Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out.

~ Markus Zusak

The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red.

~ Markus Zusak

For two days I went about my business. I travelled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.

~ Markus Zusak

Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heart beat revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest?

~ Markus Zusak

And I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later - a vision in the book thief herself - that as she knelt next to Hans Hubermann, she watched him stand and play the accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Liesel Meminger one last time as the sky was slowly taken away from her.

~ Markus Zusak

Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.

~ Markus Zusak

That's typically what writers do; we just sit around complaining most of the time. And the better things are going, the more they complain.

~ 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

For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I'd started writing down, but I couldn't. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered okayness in my ear. I didn't speak it, to anyone.

~ Markus Zusak

She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward.

~ Markus Zusak

It's funny, don't you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out.

~ Markus Zusak

It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives? I don't know.

~ Markus Zusak

It is early, early morning. It's that time when it's still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.

~ Markus Zusak

My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.

~ Markus Zusak

Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.

~ Markus Zusak

As always, she was carrying the washing. Rudy was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice.

~ Markus Zusak

Best friends one, and now we have almost nothing to say to each other. It was interesting, how he had joined those guys and I just stayed on my own. I didn't like it or dislike it. It was just funny that things had turned out that way.

~ Markus Zusak

He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.She was the book thief without the words.Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.

~ Markus Zusak

As always, one of her books was next to her.

~ Markus Zusak

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

~ Markus Zusak

She said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the gray, the every-colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Liesel Meminger had ever seen.With wonder, she smiled.That such a room existed!

~ Markus Zusak

The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.

~ Markus Zusak

How does it feel, anyway?How does what feel?When you take one of those books?At that moment, she chose to keep still. If he wants an answer, he'd have to come back, and he did. Well? he asked, but again, it was the boy who replied, before Liesel could even open her mouth.It feels good, doesn't it? To steal something back.

~ Markus Zusak

The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career.

~ Markus Zusak

I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.

~ Markus Zusak

Steadily, the room shrank, till the book thief could touch the shelves within a few small steps. She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them. One shelf against the other. And she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat, and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again. How many books had she touched? How many had she felt? She walked over and did it again, this time much slower, with her hand facing forward, allowing the dough of her palm to feel the small hurdle of each book. It felt like magic, like beauty, as bright lines of light shone down from a chandelier. Several times, she almost pulled a title from its place but didn't dare disturb them. They were too perfect.

~ Markus Zusak

The paper landed on the table, but the news was stapled to his chest. A tattoo.

~ Markus Zusak

All told, she owned fourteen books, but she saw her story as being made up predominantly of ten of them. Of those ten, six were stolen, one showed up at the kitchen table, two were made for her by a hidden Jew, and one was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon.

~ Markus Zusak

Jesus, Mary …”She said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see the paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the gray, the every-colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Liesel Meminger had ever seen.With wonder, she smiled.That such a room existed!Even when she tried to wipe the smile away with her forearm, she realized instantly that it was a pointless exercise. She could feel the eyes of the woman traveling her body, and when she looked at her, they had rested on her face.There was more silence than she ever thought possible. It extended like an elastic, dying to break. The girl broke it.“Can I?”The two words stood among acres and acres of vacant, wooden-floored land. The books were miles away.The woman nodded.Yes, you can

~ Markus Zusak

I could smell something. Fear.I could taste it now.It tasted like blood in my mouth, and I could feel it slide through me and open me up when I saw him ...

~ Markus Zusak

I watched the sky as it turned from silver to grey to the colour of rain. Even the clouds tried to look the other way.

~ Markus Zusak

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

~ Markus Zusak

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.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