Maya > Maya's Quotes

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“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.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“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. (Death)”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“A small fact:
You are going to die....does this worry you?”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“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, The Book Thief

“I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“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, The Book Thief

“Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because 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. There are many things to think of. There is much story.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Make no mistake, the woman had a heart. She had a bigger one that people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving. Remember that she was the woman with the instrument strapped to her body in the long, moon-slit night.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“It’s the leftover humans. The survivors. They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprises. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs. Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors –an expert at being left behind.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“He killed himself for wanting to live.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“... And the boy whose hair remained the color of lemons forever.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“And I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Competence was attractive.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The injury of words.
Yes, the brutality of words.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The bittersweetness of uncertainty: To win or to lose.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“There was once a strange, small man. He decided three important details about his life:
1. He would part his hair from the opposite side to everyone else.
2. He would make himself a small, strange mustache.
3. He would one day rule the world.

...Yes, the Fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“THE LAST WORDS OF MAX VANDENBURG: You've done enough.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“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?”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“She slid a book from the shelf and sat with it on the floor.
She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter.
Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words lttered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be ant of this.
What good were the words?
The book thief stood and waled carefully to the library door.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Now more than ever, 33 Himmel Street was a place of silence, and it did not go unnoticed that the Duden Dictionary was completely and utterly mistaken, especially with its related words.

Silence was not quiet or calm, and it was not peace.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I want to hurt you.
I want to own you.
I want to devour you.
I want to make you mine.
I’m already yours.”
― Pepper Winters, Tears of Tess

“I'm not afraid of hurting you. I'm afraid of how far I'm willing to go.”
― Pepper Winters, Tears of Tess

“A well-used minimum suffices for everything.”
― Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days