Markus Zusak quote: "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."

No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof wa...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

You ever hear a dog cry, Steve? You know, howling so loud it's almost unbearable?' He nodded. 'I rec...
MARKUS ZUSAK

How does it feel, anyway?"
How does what feel?"
When you take one of those books?"
At...
MARKUS ZUSAK

We used to languish when we walked, or sidle down the street like dogs that have just done something...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.
MARKUS ZUSAK

Si lance was not quiet and calm, and it was not peace.
MARKUS ZUSAK

A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I...
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
MARKUS ZUSAK

He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He m...
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Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.
MARKUS ZUSAK

We don't need a point, son. We're juvenile, we're dirty, we don't have girls, we have noses full of ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

There are so many moments to remember and sometimes I think that maybe we're not really people at al...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile a...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I told her I loved the howling sound of her harmonica. That seemed to be the limit of my courage tha...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want."
"W...
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Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He wa...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.
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

She looks at the swings, and I can see she’s imagining what they’d look like if the kids weren�...
MARKUS ZUSAK

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, sof...
MARKUS ZUSAK

A DEFINITION NOT FOUND
IN THE DICTIONARY
Not leaving: an act of trust and love,
often...
MARKUS ZUSAK

The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.
MARKUS ZUSAK

She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.
MARKUS ZUSAK

He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.

She was the bo...
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I had many boxing matches with my brother in the backyard when we were younger, and I guess while ot...
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The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it's stretched out, like a rope. At t...
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Well, this is basically the end, so the answers should be in these next few pages. I doubt they will...
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Living in Sydney, I've taken the chance to start surfing again. One of my best memories of growi...
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It's not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It's just that you know the person better, ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Best friends one, and now we have almost nothing to say to each other. It was interesting, how he ha...
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I thought for a moment about the dog. Miffy. I guess no matter how much Rube and I complained about ...
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... And the boy whose hair remained the color of lemons forever.
MARKUS ZUSAK

***A SMALL THEORY***
People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and its ends, bu...
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The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of h...
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A couple of them were school beauty-queen pretty while a few were that more real-looking type. A rea...
MARKUS ZUSAK

My mouth opened.
It happened.
Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling. MARKUS ZUSAK

It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Awkward.
That's exactly how it was when we walked over to our sister and stood on each side of ...
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When life robs you, sometimes you have to rob it back.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I procrastinate in spades. In my defence, I also try to have all other distractions solved before I ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn...
MARKUS ZUSAK

The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores - like bandaids ha...
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The happening that happened was that I met this girl ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

A SMALL PIECE OF TRUTH
I do not carry a sickle or scythe.
I only wear a hooded black robe ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particu...
MARKUS ZUSAK

It’s a small story really, about, among other things:

* A girl
* Some words
MARKUS ZUSAK

A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I am haunted by humans.
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Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you'...
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Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?"
...
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One was a book thief. The other stole the sky.
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People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite clear that ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

She was saying goodbye and she didn't even know it.
MARKUS ZUSAK

My heart is so tired
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The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I carried [Rudy] softly through the broken street...with him I tried a little harder [at comforting]...
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His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and...
MARKUS ZUSAK

How about a kiss, Saumensch?"

He stood waist-deep in the water for a few moments l...
MARKUS ZUSAK

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laug...
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Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay" we say. "I'm alright". But sometim...
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A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.
MARKUS ZUSAK

Even death has a heart.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her a...
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It kills me sometimes, how people die.
MARKUS ZUSAK

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.
MARKUS ZUSAK

Summer came.
For the book thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky was the colo...
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I kept walking. Have you ever done that? Just walk. Just walk and have no idea where you're going? I...
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As we walk back, it feels like the city is engulfing us. Adrenalin still pours through our veins. Sp...
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I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love mo...
MARKUS ZUSAK

She stood up and took the book from him, and as he smiled over his shoulder at some other kids, she ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find t...
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... I felt something and vowed that if I ever got a girl I would treat her right and never be bad or...
MARKUS ZUSAK

It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowm...
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

Había una vez un hombre bajito y extraño que decidió tres cosas importantes acerca de su vida: MARKUS ZUSAK

أحياناً تقوم بقراءة كتاب من روعته تريد اصطحابه معك لعد�...
MARKUS ZUSAK

She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.
MARKUS ZUSAK

If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive.
MARKUS ZUSAK

And you're Cameron Wolfe. That' gotta start meaning somethin' boy. That's gotta start churnin' insid...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children.
MARKUS ZUSAK

It was a Monday and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.
MARKUS ZUSAK

They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the...
MARKUS ZUSAK

It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend mo...
MARKUS ZUSAK

... because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it. It's the...
MARKUS ZUSAK

All told, she owned fourteen books, but she saw her story as being made up predominantly of ten of t...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I'd seen glimpses of a different me. It was a different me because in those increments of time I tho...
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The bittersweetness of uncertainty: To win or to lose.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I’m Angelina,” she says. “Are you here to save us?” I can see a tiny spark of hope awaken in...
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Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his ther...
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

Why can’t the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn...
MARKUS ZUSAK

We both laugh and run and the moment is so thick around me that i feel like dropping into it to let ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I realize that nothing belongs to her anymore and she belongs to everything.
MARKUS ZUSAK

When her hands reached out and poured the tea, it was as if she also poured something into me while ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever....
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My full name's Ed Kennedy. I'm nineteen. I'm an underage cab driver. I'm typical of many of the youn...
MARKUS ZUSAK

What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me!
But you're far from this. Your finge...
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My voice is like a rumour. I'm not sure if it came out or not, or if it is true.
MARKUS ZUSAK

Big things are often just little things that people notice.
MARKUS ZUSAK

Of course you're real-like any thought or any story. It's real when you're in it.
MARKUS ZUSAK

She soon says, "You're my best friend, Ed."
You can kill a man with those words.
No gun. MARKUS ZUSAK

It's impeccable how brutal the truth can be at times. You can only admire it. Usually, we walk aroun...
MARKUS ZUSAK

That was when the world wasn't so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero a...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I'm just another stupid human.
MARKUS ZUSAK

If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did, then maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live...
MARKUS ZUSAK

People die of broken hearts. They have heart attacks. And it's the heart that hurts most when things...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

My arms are killing me.
I didn't know words could be so heavy.
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

You can kill a man with those words.
No gun.
No bullets.
Just words and a girl.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I'd rather chase the sun than wait for it.
MARKUS ZUSAK

Believe it or not--it takes a lot of love to hate you like this.
MARKUS ZUSAK

It's not a big thing, but I guess it's true--big things are often just small things that are noticed...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply est...
MARKUS ZUSAK

It was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were de...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I think 'The Lord Of The Rings' is the mother of all cult books, because you can be in that ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I walked home, seeing all my doubt from the other side. Have you ever seen that? Like when you go on...
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

I could smell something. Fear.
I could taste it now.
It tasted like blood in my mouth, and...
MARKUS ZUSAK

And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through m...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.
MARKUS ZUSAK

The pages and the words are my world, spread out before your eyes and for your hand to touch. Vaguel...
MARKUS ZUSAK

At first, all is black and white.
Black on white.
That's where I'm walking, through pages....
MARKUS ZUSAK

Personally, I quite like that. Such stupid gallantry.
Yes. I like that a lot.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled tha...
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A happening was looming. It was out there somewhere beyond the regular enclosed life that I had been...
MARKUS ZUSAK

You don't always get what you wish for. Especially in Nazi Germany
MARKUS ZUSAK

They're brainless girls, otherwise they wouldn't be seen dead here. They're pretty, with ugly, appea...
MARKUS ZUSAK

...one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, an...
MARKUS ZUSAK

There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if ...
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What do you want to kiss me for? I'm filthy.'- Liesel
So am I.'- Rudy
MARKUS ZUSAK

It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Would I always feel so small that it hurt and that even the greatest outcry roaring from my throat w...
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Our own place is mall perhaps, but when your old man is eaten by his own shadow, you realise that ma...
MARKUS ZUSAK

We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is...
MARKUS ZUSAK

And then there's the sickness I feel from looking at legs I can't touch, or at lips that don't smile...
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When you looked out my window you could see the whole city crouched under a blanket of car smog.
MARKUS ZUSAK

Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the ba...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones.
Papa was an accordion!
But his bellows w...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the n...
MARKUS ZUSAK

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-s...
MARKUS ZUSAK

***A KEY WORD***
Imagined
MARKUS ZUSAK

... the city around us seemed colder than ever again, and I realised that even if it really had sens...
MARKUS ZUSAK

The dog next-door had settled down, and the neighbourhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I stood there and stared, into the sky and at the city around me. I stood, hands at my side, and I s...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Can a person steal happiness? Or is just another internal, infernal human trick?
MARKUS ZUSAK

Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times.
MARKUS ZUSAK

You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all.He'd p...
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence dr...
MARKUS ZUSAK

It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Already, I know that all of this will stay with me forever. It'll haunt me, but I also fear it will ...
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Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I don't really know that this story has a whole lot of things happen in it. It doesn't really. It's ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.
MARKUS ZUSAK

For Liesel Meminger, the early stages of 1942 could be summed up like this:
She became thirteen...
MARKUS ZUSAK

He's been to the brink and come back. I guess when you lose your pride, even for just a moment, you ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I bet that guy was as obsessed with Sarah as I am with this other girl, and I bet he promised himsel...
MARKUS ZUSAK

They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I've wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

When death captures me," the boy vowed, "he will feel my fist in his face." (31.26)
MARKUS ZUSAK

It's hard to not like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them.
MARKUS ZUSAK

The soft-spoken words fell off the side of the bed, emptying to the floor like powder.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Now I've changed things. I've left my own fingerprints on the world, no matter how small, and it's u...
MARKUS ZUSAK

In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory hum...
MARKUS ZUSAK

You can't eat books, sweetheart.
MARKUS ZUSAK

One day, Liesel.' he said, 'you'll be dying to kiss me.
MARKUS ZUSAK

A fighter can be a winner, but that doesn't make a winner a fighter.
MARKUS ZUSAK

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that ra...
MARKUS ZUSAK

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a house painter like my father, but I was always screwing up w...
MARKUS ZUSAK

People observe the colors of a day at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quiet clear that a day...
MARKUS ZUSAK

See, I was never a guy who had a whole heap of friends to belong to. Besides Greg Fienni, I never re...
MARKUS ZUSAK

And why?’ He pauses. ‘I did it because you are the epitome of ordinariness, Ed. And if a guy lik...
MARKUS ZUSAK

She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.
MARKUS ZUSAK

The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds...
MARKUS ZUSAK

How many times did she have to say goodbye?
MARKUS ZUSAK

Where Hans Hubermann and Erik Vandenburg were ultimately united by music, Max and Liesel were held t...
MARKUS ZUSAK

Here is a small fact: You are going to die"
"does this scare you? I urge you don't be afraid, I...
MARKUS ZUSAK

*** A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT ***
ABOUT RUDY STEINER
He didn't deserve to die the way he did.
MARKUS ZUSAK

*** A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT ***
***ABOUT RUDY STEINER***
He didn't deserve to die the way he ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

The moon was sewn into the sky that night
MARKUS ZUSAK

The question is, what colour will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sk...
MARKUS ZUSAK

There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking,and there are soft,coal-colored clouds...
MARKUS ZUSAK

He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would...
MARKUS ZUSAK

He had what he called just a small ration of tools:
A painted book.
A handful of pencils.<...
MARKUS ZUSAK

She was a Jew feeder without a question in the world on that man's first night in Molching. She was ...
MARKUS ZUSAK

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

Her teeth were like a soccer crowd, crammed in.
MARKUS ZUSAK

If your eyes could speak, what would they say?.
MARKUS ZUSAK

The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was no...
MARKUS ZUSAK

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.

Markus Zusak

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