Markus Zusak Quotes

I guess when someone tells you something they they usually guard, you feel privileged, not because you know something no-one else knows, but because you feel chosen. You feel like that person wants her life to intersect with yours. I think that's what felt best about it.

~ Markus Zusak

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

I actually feel quite self-indulgent at the moment, telling you all about me, me, me.(...) On the other hand, you're a human -you should understand self obsession.

~ Markus Zusak

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

~ Markus Zusak

In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

~ Markus Zusak

But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?

~ Markus Zusak

Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that is was a living hell. It wasn't. But is sure as hell wasn't heaven, either.

~ Markus Zusak

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

~ Markus Zusak

If nothing else, they died fast and they were warm. The boy from the plane, I thought. The one with the teddy bear. Where was Rudy's confort? Where was someone to alleviate this robbery of his life? Who was there to soothe him as life's rug was snatched from under his sleeping feet?

~ Markus Zusak

... because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it. It's the ones in between that test you. They're the ones that bring questions with them.

~ Markus Zusak

And you're Cameron Wolfe. That' gotta start meaning somethin' boy. That's gotta start churnin' inside us, making us wanna be someone for those names, and not just another couple of guys who amounted to nothin' but what people said we would. No way. We're getting' out of that. We have to. We're gonna crawl and moan and fight and bite and bark at anything that gets in our way or tries to hunt us down and shoot us. All right?

~ Markus Zusak

Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten up by his own shadow, you realize maybe that in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it. Maybe that's what these pages of words are about. Bringing the world to the window.

~ Markus Zusak

That paper--it sits there, open at the employment section. It sits there like a war, and each small advertisement is another trench for a person to dive into. To hope and fight in.

~ Markus Zusak

The color of defeat chokes her pupils, even though her nod and smile and uncomfortable sitting motion on the couch indicate that she is not finished yet. She will carry on, like all of us. Smile stubborn. Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

~ Markus Zusak

It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.

~ Markus Zusak

I don't leave a note.There's nothing else to do. At first, I'd wanted to write Merry Christmas on the box somewhere, but I decide against it. This isn't about words.It's about glowing lights and small things that are big.

~ Markus Zusak

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

~ Markus Zusak

The dog next-door had settled down, and the neighbourhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in our backyard. It was like it could sense it. It could sense some form of tragedy and helplessness being played out, and to tell you the truth, it all surprised me. I was so used to things just going on, oblivious and ignorant to all feeling.

~ Markus Zusak

If someone wanted to be a runner, you don't tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.

~ Markus Zusak

It's not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It's just that you know the person better, and you know they don't really care if you're acting like a poor, grovelling idiot. They know you would do the same for them.

~ Markus Zusak

Rudy handed it back. Speaking of which, I think we're both slightly in for it when we get home. You especially.Why me?You know- your mama.What about her? Liesel was exercising the blatant right of every person who's ever belonged to a family. 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

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

~ 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... Max, at that moment, knew that only a child could have given him a weather report like that. On the wall, he painted a long, tightly knotted rope with a dripping yellow sun at the end of it, as if you could dive right into it. On the ropy cloud, he drew two figures-a thin girl and a withering Jew-and they were walking, arms balanced, toward that dripping sun.

~ Markus Zusak

You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all.He'd probably say he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity.

~ Markus Zusak

I wanted nothing for free.Nothing came for free at our place anyway.

~ Markus Zusak

The moon was sewn into the sky that night

~ Markus Zusak

The city buildings in the distance are holding up the sky, it seems.

~ Markus Zusak

My mouth opened.It happened.Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling.Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions pored up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn't. I didn't care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, oh, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn't lie down.

~ Markus Zusak

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

~ Markus Zusak

It's lucky I was there. Then again, who am I kidding? I'm in most places at least once, and in 1943, I was just about everywhere.

~ Markus Zusak

It’s chaos out there, and chaos is what we need.

~ Markus Zusak

It's pathetic how a man can stand by and do nothing as a whole nation cleans out the garbage and makes itself great-Hans Junior

~ Markus Zusak

One good punch from Rube on me would send the sky into my head and the clouds into my lungs. I just always tried to stay up.

~ Markus Zusak

Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a licence?

~ Markus Zusak

In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief's kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.

~ Markus Zusak

Awkward.That's exactly how it was when we walked over to our sister and stood on each side of her, looking at her and feeling things and not knowing what to do.

~ Markus Zusak

There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty.

~ Markus Zusak

The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help. They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip- the relative you cringe to kiss.

~ Markus Zusak

Stealing it, in a sick kind of sense, was like earning it.

~ Markus Zusak

The word maybe was beginning to annoy me, because the only thing that was fixed was that maybe would be with me forever.

~ Markus Zusak