Top 412 Quotes & Sayings by Markus Zusak - Page 7

A small fact: You are going to die....does this worry you?

There were stars. They burned my eyes.

I stood there and stared, into the sky and at the city around me. I stood, hands at my side, and I saw what had happened to me and who I was and the way things would always be for me. Truth. There was no more wishing, or wondering. I knew who I was, and what I would always do. I believed it, as my teeth touched and my eyes were overrun.

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.

Summer came. For the books thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews.

The nightmares arrived like they always did, much like the best player in the opposition when you've heard rumors that he might be injured or sick-but there he is, warming up with the rest of them, ready to take the field.

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.

I say, 'Don't lose your heart, Rube.' And very clearly, without moving, my brother answers me. He says, 'I'm not tryin' to lose it, Cam. I'm tryin' to find it.

I wanted to drown inside a woman in the feeling and drooling of the love I could give her. I wanted her pulse to crush me with its intensity. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted myself to be.

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.

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.

Something I'd like to be perfect at? ... Loving you,' I said. The words climbed from my mouth. 'I'd want to be perfect at loving you.

We underestimate teenagers at our peril. Even the dismissive thing out on the street--look at what they're wearing. Then we'll hear stories about how a toddler fell on the tracks, and it's often a teenager who comes to the rescue and walks away because he or she doesn't want any credit. I recognize it because I've written books for teenagers--it's basically that they feel things more than adults do. They want things more than you think. They want things with greater depth than you think they do. Teenagers have got a lot of soul that adults have forgotten they have within themselves.

Two weeks to change the world, fourteen days to destroy it.

It's my heart that is tired. A thirteen-year-old heart shouldn't feel like this.

The dilemma, of course, is that such people save their most important words for after, when the surrounding humans are unlucky enough to find them.

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.

So many humans. So many colours. They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-coloured clouds, beating, like black hearts. And then. There is death. Making his way through all of it. On the surface: unflappable, unwavering. Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.

I'm not the messenger at all. I'm the message.

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.

THE LAST WORDS OF MAX VANDENBURG: You've done enough.

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.

She was one if the few souls that made me wonder what's it to live.

When finally she finished and stood herself up, he put his arm around her, best-buddy style, and they walked on. There was no request for a kiss. Nothing like that. You can love Rudy for that, if you like.

Five hundred souls. I carried them in my fingers, like suitcases. Or I'd throw them over my shoulder. It was only the the children I carried in my arms.

I'm gonna hunt my life down and grab it.

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.

Is there cowardice with the acknowledgement of fear?

And then there's the sickness I feel from looking at legs I can't touch, or at lips that don't smile at me. Or hips that don't reach for me. And hearts that don't beat for me.

I think, as the writer, you're always going to mourn something [left out of a film]. But you also just want to know there's a good reason for it being left out. On the whole, you want to give something to somebody creative. The worst thing you can do is say, "Here, be creative, but do it like I want you to do it." I was always very mindful of that.

I read some books that were the right books for me. I read them and I didn't even notice turning the pages anymore. I thought, "That's what I want to do with my life."

When I find research really rewarding is when one piece of information gives you an idea for a story. That's when it's great.

I see Death as the part of us that knows all the time that we're going to die, reminding us to live properly.

for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.

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.

There are two magic acts I want to pull off when I write. One is creating a feeling that when you're inside a book, you believe everything you're reading even when you know it's not true. And the second is an extension of that, which is you know it's not true, you know it's not real, but you believe it anyway. And it's that believing of the story that isn't real that attracted me to writing and storytelling in general.

As far as this categorization of books, the way I see it is there are really a hundred-odd categories of books plus one, and on the top shelf at home, I've got the books I love, my favorite books, and that's the type of book that I want to write.

The beauty of my work is that my sets cost nothing. That's what I love about being a writer of novels.

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

I thought what if death is more like thinking, well, war is like the boss at your shoulder, constantly wanting more, wanting more, wanting more, and then that gave me the idea that Death is weary, he's fatigued, and he's haunted by what he sees humans do to each other because he's on hand for all of our great miseries.

Nothing comes naturally to me...I have to work and rework and that's where the ideas come from - from years of working on it and thinking about it.

I'm having bigger problems when I'm writing.

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.

As a child in Sydney, my German Mum and my Austrian Dad would spontaneously tell me stories about what they saw and what they did as children. It was like a piece of Europe coming into our house... Those stories led me to my writing.

It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.

My voice is like a rumour. I'm not sure if it came out or not, or if it is true.

I guess if editing doesn't hurt, you're probably not doing it properly. I find it quite difficult. The hardest part is believing that it's actually working and getting rid of the doubt that always creeps in.

It's about glowing lights and small things that are big.

Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don’t want to hope for anything anymore.

If you ever write a book, I can only give you one piece of advice. Don't let your parents get involved.

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

I've been a writer since I was 16. I didn't get published until I was 24. I know that sounds crazy.