Quotes by 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.

There are so many moments to remember and sometimes I think that maybe were not really people at all. Maybe moments are what we are.... Sometimes I just survive. But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. Im okay we say. Im alright. But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you cant get it off. Thats when you realize that sometimes it isnt even an answer--its a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.

Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.

Id seen glimpses of a different me. It was a different me because in those increments of time I thought I actually became a winner.The truth, however, is painful.It was a truth that told me with a scratching internal brutality that I was me, and that winning want natural for me. It had to be fought for, in the echoes and trodden footprints of my mind. In a way, I had to scavenge for moments of alrightness.

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.

***A KEY WORD*** Imagined

As we walk back, it feels like the city is engulfing us. Adrenalin still pours through our veins. Sparks flow through to our fingers. Weve still been running in the mornings, but the citys different then. Its filled with hope and with bristles of winter sunshine. In the evening, its like it dies, waiting to be born again the next morning.

It kills me sometimes, how people die.

A small but noteworthy note. Ive seen so many young men over the years who think theyre running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.

His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and say 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. More of them have already found their way to other places.

I carried [Rudy] softly through the broken street...with him I tried a little harder [at comforting]. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water, chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next-door neighbor. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. Its his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.

On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy Steiner was robbery--so much life, so much to live for--yet somehow, Im certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. Hed have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. Hed have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips.Yes, I know it.In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. Hed have loved it all right.You see?Even death has a heart.

A SMALL PIECE OF TRUTHI do not carry a sickle or scythe.I only wear a hooded black robe when its cold.And I dont have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. You want to know what I truly look like? Ill help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.

A human doesnt 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 Im 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.

It was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to name just a few. Forget the scythe, Goddamn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a vacation.

***HERE IS A SMALL FACT*** You are going to die.