Markus Zusak Quotes - Page 3

See, I was never a guy who had a whole heap of friends to belong to. Besides Greg Fienni, I never really had friends. I kind of stayed on my own. I hated it, but I was proud of it too. Cameron Wolfe needed no one. He didn't need to be amongst a pack. Not all of us roam like that. No, all he needed was his instincts. All he needed was himself.
Markus Zusak
All my friends seem to be smart arses. Don't ask me why. Like many things, it is what it is.
Markus Zusak
You're a dead man". I hear his voice again, and I see the words on my face when I get back in the cab and look in the rearview mirror.It makes me think of my life, my nonexistent accomplishments and my overall abilities in incompetence."A dead man", I think. He's not far wrong.
Markus Zusak
She was like a lone angel floating above the surface of the earth, laughing with delight because she could fly but crying out of loneliness.
Markus Zusak
It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.
Markus Zusak
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.
Markus Zusak
All four of us were young and undaunted and our smiles were so strong that it made me smile even then on the couch, with a kind of loss.
Markus Zusak
She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.
Markus Zusak
DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children
Markus Zusak
Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. (p.36)
Markus Zusak
He switched off the light, came back and sat in the chair. In the darkness, Liesel kept her eyes open. She was watching the words.
Markus Zusak
Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, an in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me. Even in the night, in bed, they woke me.They painted themselves onto the ceiling.They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind.When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down , on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed color that morning.
Markus Zusak
If your eyes could speak, what would they say?
Markus Zusak
I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right. - Liesel Meminger
Markus Zusak
I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what couldI tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever 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.None of those things, however, came out of my mouth.All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you.I am haunted by humans.
Markus Zusak
For a long time, she sat and saw.She had seen her brother die with one eye open, on still in a dream. She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion. A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum. A young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow. She had watched a bomber pilot die in a metal case. She had seen a Jewish man who had twice given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched to a concentration camp. And at the center of all of it, she saw the Fuhrer shouting his words and passing them around.Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.
Markus Zusak
She couldn't tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to her bed.
Markus Zusak
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
I told her about school and how I sat on a wall there and felt stories and words move through me ...
Markus Zusak
At first, all is black and white.Black on white.That's where I'm walking, through pages.These pages.Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of.
Markus Zusak
They're brainless girls, otherwise they wouldn't be seen dead here. They're pretty, with ugly, appealing smiles and conversations we can't hear. They breathe smoke and blow it out, and words drop from their mouths and get crushed to the floor. Or they get discarded, just to glow with warmth for a moment, for someone else to tread on later.
Markus Zusak
Our own place is mall perhaps, but when your old man is eaten by his own shadow, you realise that maybe 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
The pages and the words are my world, spread out before your eyes and for your hand to touch. Vaguely, I can see you face looking down into me, as I look back. Do you see my eyes?
Markus Zusak
The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.
Markus Zusak
She kept watching the words.
Markus Zusak
The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.
Markus Zusak
They sat a few meters apart, speaking very rarely, and there was really only the noise of turning pages (…) Where Hans Hubermann and Erik Vandenburg were ultimately united by music, Max and Liesel were held together by the quiet gathering of words."Hi, Max.""Hi, Liesel."They would sit and read.
Markus Zusak
I love and hate this place because it is full of words.
Markus Zusak
a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.
Markus Zusak
Personally, I think sex should be like math.At school.No one really cares if they're crap at math. They even proclaim it. They'll say to anyone, "Yeah, I don't mind science and English, but I'm absolutely shithouse at math." And other people will laugh and say,"Yeah, me too. I would have a clue about all that logarithm shit. You should be able to say that about sex too. You should be proudly able to say, "Yeah I wouldn't have a clue about all that orgasm shit, ay. I'm okay at everything else but when it comes to that part I wouldn't have a clue.
Markus Zusak
It could be worse. I could be you.
Markus Zusak
the threat of Jewish competition was taken away, but so were the Jewish customers
Markus Zusak
Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want.""What's that, Ritchie?"His answer is simple."To want.
Markus Zusak
I told her I loved the howling sound of her harmonica. That seemed to be the limit of my courage that night, and even those spoken words had to struggle their way out of my mouth. It's all very well for words to build bridges, but sometimes I think it's a matter of knowing when to do it. Knowing when the time's right.
Markus Zusak
Well, have you even tried again? You can’t just sit around waiting for the new world to take it with you. You have to go out and be part of it - despite your past mistakes.
Markus Zusak
... I felt something and vowed that if I ever got a girl I would treat her right and never be bad or dirty to her or hurt her, ever. I vowed it and had all the confidence in the world that I would keep the vow.
Markus Zusak
It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side - just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side.
Markus Zusak
Because you don't learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.
Markus Zusak
Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.
Markus Zusak
Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.
Markus Zusak
Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.
Markus Zusak
Rosa Hubermann was sitting on the edge of the bed with her husband's accordion tied to her chest. Her fingers hovered above the keys. She did not move. She didn't ever appear to be breathing.
Markus Zusak
She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.
Markus Zusak
Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
Markus Zusak
I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me.
Markus Zusak
I'm just another stupid human.
Markus Zusak
I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.
Markus Zusak
Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?
Markus Zusak
Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?
Markus Zusak
... none of them had it. They had no qualms about stealing, but they needed to be told. They liked to be told, and Viktor Chemmel liked to be the teller. It was a nice microcosm.
Markus Zusak
If her soul ever leaks, I want it to land on me.
Markus Zusak
And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled.I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well.The hunger.The desire.Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth.
Markus Zusak
A couple of them were school beauty-queen pretty while a few were that more real-looking type. A realer kind of pretty.
Markus Zusak
It's much easier . . . to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.
Markus Zusak
I kept walking. Have you ever done that? Just walk. Just walk and have no idea where you're going? It wasn't a good feeling, but not a bad one either. I felt caged and free at the same time, like it was only myself that wouldn't allow me to feel either great or miserable.
Markus Zusak
One eye open. One still in a dream
Markus Zusak
On the ration cards of Nazi Germany, there was no listing for punishment, but everyone had to take their turn. For some it was death in a foreign country during the war. For others it was poverty and guilt when the war was over, when six million discoveries were made throughout Europe.
Markus Zusak
The Hubbermanns had two of their own (children), but they were older and had moved out...Soon they would be both in the war. One would be making bullets. The other would be shooting them.
Markus Zusak
July 24, 6:03 A.M.The laundry was warm and the rafters were firm, and Michael Holzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff...Michael Holzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for wanting to live.
Markus Zusak
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.
Markus Zusak