Top 412 Quotes & Sayings by Markus Zusak - Page 5

Even enemies were an inch away from friendship.

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

An attribute of Rosa Hubermann, she was a good woman for a crisis.

So I saw that there was only me. There was only me who could worry about what was happening here, inside these walls of my life. Other people had their own worlds to worry about, and in the end, they had to fend for themselves, just like us.

Everything was good. But it was awful, too.

I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That's the smile I was smiling.

I also fear that nothing really ends at the end. Things just keep going as long as memory can wield its ax, always finding a soft part in your mind to cut through and enter.

When I recollect her, I see a long list of colors, but it's the three in which I saw her in the flesh that resonate the most. Sometimes I manage to float far above those three moments. I hang suspended, until a septic truth bleeds toward clarity. That's when I see them formulate: THE COLORS RED: [rectangle] WHITE: [circle] BLACK: [swastika] They fall on top of each other. The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red.

...to swear with a ferocity that can only be described as a talent.

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.

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.

Better that we leave the paint behind," Hans told her, "than ever forget the music.

Tears were frozen to the book theif's face.

How about a kiss, Saumensch?

The happening that happened was that I met this girl.

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

Possibly the only good to come out of these nightmares was that it brought Hans Hubermann, her new papa, into the room, to soothe her, to love her. He came every night and sat with her. The first couple of times, he simply stayed - a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered, "Shhh, I'm here, it's all right." After three weeks he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that Hans Hubermann would always appear midscream, and he would not leave. (36)

Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. (p.36)

If I ever leave this place- I'll make sure I'm better HERE first.

You should know it yourself- a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.

Personally, I like a chocolate-covered sky. Dark, dark chocolate. People say it suits me. I do, however, try to enjoy every color I see - the whole spectrum. A billion or so flavors, none of them quite the same, and a sky to slowly suck on. It takes the edge off the stress. It helps me relax.

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.

Beautiful women are the torment of my existence.

When a person's last response was Saumensch or Saukerl or Arschloch, you knew you had them beaten.

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.

It’s a small story really, about, among other things: * A girl * Some words * An accordionist * Some fanatical Germans * A Jewish fist fighter * And quite a lot of thievery

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.

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.

I’m Angelina,” she says. “Are you here to save us?” I can see a tiny spark of hope awaken in her eyes. “You’re right, Angelina - I’m here to save you.” “Can you? Really?” “I’ll try,” I say and the girl smiles.

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.

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.

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.

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

...they watched the humans disappear. They watched them dissolve, like moving tablets in the humid air.

… it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger. The sky was dripping. Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.

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.

Finally, in October 1945, a man with swampy eyes, feathers of hair, and a clean-shaven face walked into the shop. He approached the counter. "Is there someone here by the name of Leisel Meminger?" "Yes, she's in the back," said Alex. He was hopeful, but he wanted to be sure. "May I ask who is calling on her?" Leisel came out. They hugged and cried and fell to the floor.

It kills me sometimes, how people die.

See, Cameron. The only things I care about in this life are me, you, Mum, Dad, Steve and Sarah. And maybe Miffy. The rest of the world means nothing to me. The rest of the world can rot.' Am I like that too?' You? No way.' There's a slight gap in his words. 'And that's your problem. You care about everything.' He's right. I do.

If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did, then maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.

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.

She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter. Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this. Without words, the Führer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make us feel better. What good were the words? She said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. "What good are the words?

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

She didn't dare to look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging onto her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside her. This, it said, is your accordion.

For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words--their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?

In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring to beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them - until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet.

She gave 'The Dream Carrier' to Max as if words alone could nourish him.

Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.

It was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were dead Russians and Germans everywhere. Those who remained were firing into the blank pages in front of them. Three languages interwove. The Russian, the bullets, the German.

But neither of us knows, because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it.

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.

After another ten minutes, the gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Liesel Meminger would widen them a little further and squeeze through. ***TWO QUESTIONS*** Would the gates shut behind her? Or would they have the goodwill to let her back out? As Liesel would discover, a good thief requires many things. Stealth. Nerve. Speed. More important than any of those things, however, was one final requirement. Luck. Actually. Forget the ten minutes. The gates open now.

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

Her teeth were like a soccer crowd, crammed in.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

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

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.)

..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.

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

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